30th March 2022

Is there anybody out there?

Boris announced that his government’s “Plan B” social restrictions for dealing with the Omicron variant of the coronavirus in England were to end from Thursday 27 January. He also told civil servants to get back to their desks and 'show the lead' after work from home guidance was axed.

Shortly after Boris’s diktat Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, Wednesday 2^nd February to be precise, meaning that if you believe in a groundhog's ability to predict the weather -- we're in for at least six more weeks of winter and almost by default the UK will see WFH continue until at least the end of March.  

With the world of big business seemingly influenced by ‘Punxsutawney Phil’ seeing his shadow after that bunker emergence, when will those big businesses realise that there are customers, aka consumers, waiting out there to speak with them but are being seriously deterred by the fact that nobody seems to answer a phone call like they used to? 

Over the last week I have made calls to some 20 firms in the financial services sector, and the FCA.

Even though some are back in the office, hybrid arrangments seem the order of the day in most cases. Call answering today is a shadow of what it was pre covid. One firm I called just had a very short message on answering saying that as everyone is working from home, please e mail.

Only this morning, I had a telephone call answered by one major firm after 11 minutes, I know I should have better things to do, but this is crazy. People have got to get back into the office, those calls handled as they used to be and not relying on some ‘hybrid arrangement’- a term heard a lot these days. 

This malaise only seems to affect larger firms, smaller more agile businesses are seeing returns to normality.

A suggestion for all ‘big brand’ CEO’s. 

Make a point of calling your own main office public facing number a few times throughout the day and see for yourself how long it takes to get that call answered. When answered, ask to be transferred to a colleague in your office. You could even ask to speak to yourself, that will take longer of course, and the call will no doubt have some message like, I am in meetings all day, please leave a message. 

Nobody is talking anymore, no water cooler gatherings and I shudder to think how much business has been lost because of this inability to quickly answer a call from your customer or potential customer?

I think it will only take a day for those CEO’s to realise that those ‘hybrid arrangements’ that HR has no doubt implemented in good faith to keep staff ‘safe,’ are not working and that the customer/ client frustration of not being able to quickly and easily communicate as a pre Covid norm is doing more brand damage than can be imagined.

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