Monday - Tea, Ern?

When I joined the company all those years ago, part of the induction training focused on the impact of bad service on the reputation of the company. If you provide a good service, the recipient will tell 1 other person. If you provide a bad service, then statistics indicate that they'll tell 1o people about their experience and possibly even write to 'Watchdog'.

Now if the board understand this, do they understand what sort of impact redundancy has upon the company's reputation amongst its customer base?

It was announced that another office was to close today with the loss of 57 jobs. I'm sure that the board would have issued a press release to the stock exchange about 'reducing costs and improving efficiency' blah-de-blah-de-blah! But aren't those 57 staff potential customers as well?

Do you think that they are going to buy the company's products in the future? Do you think they are going to recommend the company's products to their friends and families? I think not.

'Its only 57 people,' the board might say, however if you remember the induction training statistics the negative impact of this decision will not just swing their purchase decisions but those of their families and friends. So how many customers has the business lost? And if you count up all of the redundancies over the past 10 years - it numbers thousands not hundreds - have the board really improved our operating ratio? No. I think you'll find that in reality they've merely alienated a great number of potential customers.

No matter how many stock market announcements you make, it means nothing if no-one is buying from you.

Its bad enough that our present crop of customers have to endure long waiting times, advisers that cannot understand them and numerous cock-ups due to the constant movement of work from continent to continent without creating a lifetime of disgruntled customers from within.

Anyway my rant is over now. Please accept my apologies. Sometimes I wish my biggest problem could be the same as Dan's or Jo's - how to persuade Ted to get a round of drinks in from the machine.