Pittwater Life August 2018 Issue

to the street so we rely on bottled
gas which in our case comes from
Origin. On the day that delivery
was expected I received a text
saying that delivery had failed
and they would reattempt the
following day. No big deal. The
next day I receive another
text, delivery has failed again.
Fantastic news; this represented
another chance to deal with a call
centre. When I finally navigated
the menu to a human I was told
that our long-standing driver
now considered the site access
too steep in light of their new
workplace health and safety
policy. Ok, I asked, so what was
the point of the text message
about reattempting delivery
the next day – did they expect
the site to magically level itself
overnight? After more circular
discussion I worked out that
Origin had unilaterally withdrawn
the supply of gas due to a policy
change, with no plan of informing
us. So after organising to move
the gas bottles to a new policyfriendly
location I made two more
calls to the call centre to arrange
delivery, each time being assured
that that it would be next day. As
anyone who relies on bottled gas
knows you only call when you
have emptied one cylinder and
switched to the next (which was
weeks ago by this stage) so we
were rapidly spiralling towards a
four-long-haired-girl-householdbathroom-crisis-Armageddon.
The bottles arrived four days
later, barely in the nick of time.
While Willie Nelson implored
mothers not to let their children
grow up to be cowboys, ladies
I’m suggesting it could be worse,
much worse if they wind up
as drones in call centres being
professional apologisers. What
could be worse than being that
person on the end of the line
with absolutely no authority
or resources to fix a problem,
armed only with an internal
training course on how to deal
with difficult people and being
‘recorded for training purposes’?
It will be interesting to see if
our large corporates continue
with this cookie cutter approach
to managing customers and
issues. Corporate Australia
along with many of our large
institutions are facing an ongoing
loss of trust – the following words
were written by Patrick Durkin in
the Australian Financial Review in
The Local Voice Since 1991
March this year reporting on the
Edelman Trust Barometer: “Trust
in business slid from 48 to 45 per
cent, government fell from 37 to
35 per cent, media from 32 to 31
per cent and NGOs from 52 to 48
per cent. Australia rates just four
percentage points above Russia,
the world’s least-trusting nation,
and our trust index score places
us in the bottom-third of nations.”
Of course, since then we’ve
had further revelations from
the Banking Royal Commission,
Optus botched the Football World
Cup streaming then botched the
refunds, Woolworths and Coles
upset their customers by selling
them plastic bags they used
to get for free and Bill Shorten
backflipped on small company
tax cuts.
Perhaps to improve trust and
make jobs interesting again
our big businesses could turn
the customer relationship on
its head. Stop listening to those
people with the word strategic in
their job titles, end the ceaseless
rounds of internal meetings, the
obsession with KPIs, targets and
bonus culture and stop hiding
behind the internet.
What if a bank came along that
reinstated the role and status
of the local manager, stopped
trying to sell you stuff every time
you went in there, published the
phone number of the local branch
on their website, kept relationship
managers in their roles for more
than 6 months, put their best
staff who can also speak English
on the end of the enquiry line and
actively rewarded customers for
loyalty and not just those who are
about to walk? We could name
it after an old brand from the
1980s: ‘Mirage Bank’ – too good
to be true.
Brian Hrnjak B Bus CPA (FPS) is
a Director of GHR Accounting
Group Pty Ltd, Certified
Practising Accountants. Offices
at: Suite 12, Ground Floor,
20 Bungan Street Mona Vale
NSW 2103 and Shop 8, 9 – 15
Central Ave Manly NSW 2095,
Telephone: 02 9979-4300,
Webs: www.ghr.com.au and
www.altre.com.au Email:
brian@ghr.com.au
These comments are of a
general nature only and are
not intended as a substitute
for professional advice.
AUGUST 2018 53
Business Life