Dead stupid

Should anyone think that Cicero has turned over a new leaf and is now thinking differently after my previous tale of humility and compassion, be assured that this week normal service will be resumed. 

Today he will uncover and target yet another example of crass stupidity in his quest to improve customer service one business at a time.

It is a thankless task but a job that has to be done otherwise we condemn the next customer to appalling, unthinking, unintelligent and de-humanised customer service.

Long suffering readers will know that the most widely quoted causes of inaction by businesses and their people here usually involve health and safety or data protection or following due process. In other words more emphasis is given to satisfying the needs of the health and safety gauleiters, of the business prevention compliance unit, or of the boss, rather than doing the right thing for the customer and applying some common sense.

This recent example from Cicero’s immense back catalogue of customer service howlers will illustrate this nicely.

Imagine, if you will, a telephone call between Cicero and the customer service unit of a well- established and highly-known insurance company.

Insurance Company: Good morning, can I take your policy number, please

Cicero: would it not be better if you treated me as a person not a number and asked for my name first

 

Insurance Company: I appreciate what you are saying but my computer says I must ask for policy number first

Cicero: Why?

Insurance Company: It is company policy. I guess it is in case you are not who you are

Cicero: And how does asking for my policy number verify that?

At this point there is much to-ing and fro-ing between Cicero and Insurance Company in a failed attempt to argue the logic of this case.

We now cut to the crux of the debate.

Cicero: Now we have established my bona fides, I would like to claim on an insurance policy taken out by my grandmother.

Insurance Company: We need your grandmother’s permission before we can discuss this. Do you have this?

Cicero: No. She is dead. That is why I am claiming on the policy.

Insurance Company: We still need her permission. Is there no way you can get her written authorisation?

Cicero: Are you seriously saying that I need the written authorisation from a dead person before I can make a claim? No, I have just checked it’s not April 1^st.

Insurance Company: Yes, it is data protection.

Cicero: Perhaps you might be able to give me a few pointers as to how I can get written authority from someone who is dead and even if she were still alive it is very unlikely that she would be given she would now be 138 at next birthday.

Insurance Company: Yes I can see that but to conform to my procedures and with Data Protection I cannot proceed unless we have written authority.

You really couldn’t make it up, could you?

After a few more moments of such badinage with the irrestible logic of Cicero continuing to bang up against the immovable dumbness of the clerk, the conversation was taken over by one whose pay grade entitled him to a few more brain cells. This resolved the conversation to Cicero’s satisfaction with a promise to review processes, to send away the hapless clerk for re-education and a cheque to charity to compensate for Cicero’s inconvenience that he had to deal with such abject stupidity.

Maybe if the business and its people had been a bit more obsessed with the customer and less in thrall to its own processes, to its business prevention compliance police, to a culture of disempowerment and fear, such stupidity could be averted. 

A lesson for many businesses.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.