On reading the article by Alison Pake, regarding her experience with Capita, I was not, unfortunately, surprised. Having worked for Capita in the Pension Administration sector, I can attest to their lack of customer service.
My whole working life was in customer service, whether external or internal.
I prided myself on giving customers the very best experience possible.
While I was there the backlog was huge, but instead of getting more people to complete the necessary actions the management decided it was better to answer the calls and fob the callers off.
The calculation was made, not in favour of the customer but rather to escape financial penalties for missing Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
If a customer called to ask when they would get quotes or such like, we were asked to raise a new action which reset the SLA.
I could not be party to lying
I had two customers in a row that had been let down by us, and I decided I could not be party to lying to them.
I was asked how raising a new action helped them, I told them it didn’t and that I had asked the same question and didn’t get a satisfactory answer.
I then stood up, said in a loud voice how bad it was (I may have used some naughty words) and walked out of the building and did not go back.
I believe Capita care about money and not customer service, and it should be the other way round.
