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CEO'S BLOGWhy do some companies treat us as criminals? - 16th December 2011Two stories drawn from the same personal experience tell a tale of the contradiction in the way some organisations communicate with the public. One way is to treat us as honest citizens; the other is to regard us as actual or potential criminals. At my local rail station outside London, the station master is a legend. He knows everyone; and it is said that he even rings people when a train is running late, so they can ‘stay in bed’. I cannot vouch for that but I reckon it's true. Sometimes he will make unexpected platform announcements such as, “If any of you are considering coming back after 10pm tonight, come and see me and I will talk you out of it.” He knows when students are about to take their exams and wishes them luck. Strangely, whenever he is away he is always replaced by a temporary station master who is the complete opposite. One seemed barely able to control his rage. It is at those times that you miss the real station master and realise that in his way, every day, he raises the spirits. It is doubtful that he is appreciated in head office as much as he ought to be. And then there is the other approach. The same company juxtaposed two posters in its waiting room where commuters sheltered from the freezing rain. On the left, it advertised something about ‘festive fun’ which clichés aside, sounded at least cheerful. However, to the right we were bombarded with a stark message about fare dodgers. In truth, most of us pay far too much money for a service that is, at best, variable. And often the heating on the trains is so intense; I have to assume there is a conspiracy at head office to kill commuters. So, I think we put up with a great deal and most of us do so with good humour. But the poster had a different message. We had to be told that we should not steal from the train company. It said, somewhat smugly, that 4,589 people had been prosecuted for fare evasion, amounting to £1,793,467 in fines. Like parking and speeding fines, I tend to think that someone in HQ must be smiling all the way to the bank. But somehow, this is supposed to be a problem. All of those prosecuted, the poster continued cheerfully, were given a criminal record. The punch line was that this can't be worth the risk. And I thought back to all those times I had seen ordinary, decent people harassed by ticket collectors on the train. Get the wrong ticket at your peril. Rush to catch the train meaning to pay later and you will be punished. Mostly, the ticket collectors are relentless in their pursuit of so-called fare dodgers. My gut feeling tells me that the real criminals are rarely caught. It is just the disorganised, the gullible and the day dreamers who get caught for doing something they never meant to do. The result of all this? It is a rising swell of bad air; a feeling that we are being put upon. And when this company or any other like it needs us to be patient and good humoured, we will be a little less likely to respond. Somewhere, in the train company’s no doubt over-heated head office is a handbook on customer satisfaction. It probably says something about ‘delighting the customer’. In another square box in the same building sits someone else who has to catch criminals. The two of them should have a cup of tea together and compare notes. COMMENTS |
"The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile." Robert Kennedy (1968)
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