"WE VALUE YOUR CALL " - FORM DISPLACES SUBSTANCE
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| HTC WILDFIRE S
Who would have thought it? The acquisition of a new mobile (cell phone for our American readers) and a move interstate have prompted a useful insight into our society!
Before our removal from Queensland("Beautiful one day - perfect the next") to Sydney ( Sin City , New South Wales , I decided to quit my prepaid mobile phone arrangement - which had been meant to save money but ended up costing an arm and a leg - due to exorbitant call charges. The intention was to get a low rate contract for a good Android Smartphone , and I chose the HTC Wildfire S pictured above. The Phone has been everything I could hope for - a poor man's iPhone in fact.
However, dealing with our monumental TELSTRA was a nightmare. And this was the beginning of my insight forming. TELSTRA is a thoroughly "now" creation, featuring every fashionable corporate pattern of activity imaginable. If the New Business Management Gospel is true, it should be a wonder to behold. NOT!
Firstly it was a privatised Government operation. Freed of its "shackles"it proceeded to adopt every smart modern concept. To maximise efficiency (read "increase profits") it moved heavily into out-sourcing -forming a moat about itself, separating itself from its clients - a moat which is the Pacific Ocean - and placed all its call centres in the Phillipines. Having ensured that clients would , over time, be deterred from endeavouring to contact TELSTRA by phone due to the language difficulties and the confusion created by TELSTRA systems. Next, they proceeded to Franchise many of their TELSTRA SHOPS in shopping centres ( Malls to our American readers). This duplicated the language difficulties and confusion, because many of the Franchisees are themselves recently arrived from South East Asia and employ mostly young people of similar experience.In the process we spent two periods of one and a half hours on the phone to TELSTRA Philippine call centres with no result, followed by one and a half hours at a franchised TELSTRA SHOP speaking with a charming young Japanese lady still without result.
But TELSTRA was not finished with its battered clients yet. In a triumph of Western management excellence , it divisionalised its business and re- organised its accounts! Marvellous!? Each client has a Phone Number of course and then a Bill number and then an Account Number. He/she may or may not be aware that the account is a Personal account in any one of several categories - all meaningless to the client, or even a Business account within another range of several categories!
The Accounts when ( and if) received are a marvel of confusion. And, in the last week I have been advised by letter to be prepared for their new style accounts with new account numbers featuring three more digits!! i can't describe my enthusiasm in greeting the news! My first account at the new address did not arrive. But follow-up letters did. When I telephoned to ask for a copy of the missing account on two occasions , the good folk in the Phillipines were very understanding and the result is that I received 4 copies of that account by mail to my OLD address as well as one to my Email.
Now, as you would expect, TELSTRA is very big on QA (Quality Assurance) . This is one of the engines driving Australia's plunge into the embrace of the triumph of FORM over SUBSTANCE, along with Workplace Health and Safety and the manifold examples of legislated civil "morality" such as Racial Vilification Acts and Equal Rights Acts and Privacy Acts and any other reflection of a society that is trying to legislate its substitute for Christian Morality.
The latter, of course had to be abandoned because it is based on objective Truth and personal responsibility whereas in the New Order "everyone knows"that "everything is relative"and there is always "someone else" to blame when our actions are questioned or things go wrong. |
Finally we went to another TELSTRA SHOP in a very large Shopping Centre in Hornsby. There our luck changed, and Roger, a young Peruvian born fellow, solved our problems in 15 minutes.
Sadly for TELSTRA and its clients there are not enough Peruvian born employees in the company.
But , in essence, it seems to me that :
when a company adopts quality assurance,
embraces Workplace Health and Safety,
embraces concern for all sorts of equality,
renounces any type of profiling,
adopts out-sourcing and, or,
adopts franchising of its contact points,
You can be sure the client is the loser - in a big way. Everything they say means exactly the
the opposite : "We really value your call" Sure!
The earliest exemplars of this phenomenon were the Communist countries : who can forget "The Democratic Republic of ......"or the dreaded "People's Republic of China" they were not remotely Democratic and it is certainly NOT the people's! Everything they say means the opposite.
FORM has become everything and SUBSTANCE is completely emptied from our social and civil structures. Yet people seem surprised when Government bodies lose Billions of dollars and announce plans to spend tens of billions on a program with no proper business plan, or young electricians are killed and homes burnt out due to ill-conceived schemes, or international banking structures collapse with inconceivable debts. Everyone has been satisfied with form and ignored substance.
Pope Benedict has warned the Church repeatedly that programmes are not the answer, but personal holiness and personal morality and personal action and union with Christ are the answer. In other words SUBSTANCE and NOT FORM.
WE NEED A REVOLUTION IN THINKING, NOT GLIB SPIN DOCTORED SCHEMES, BUT THE REALITIES TOO OFTEN PROMISED BUT TOO RARELY DELIVERED - WHETHER IN COMMERCE, CIVIL SOCIETY, GOVERNMENT OR RELIGION
Here endeth my rant - normal, more relaxed posting will quickly resume after I have slain a Dragon next Tuesday.
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