Jester, Facilitators and Letter Writing

Today I saw Jay at work. Jay, the subject of my first Goodwill Jester blog, Jay, the resource planner and the disciplinary, has been off with stress and it was good to see him today. It was his sad tale that inspired me to start blogging about work. Well, I don't have any more news about him, so I cannot say if his ordeal is over. The Dark Satanic Mill is taking far too long to put the poor fellow out of his misery but please be assured that as soon as I have any news, my readers will be the first to hear it.

There were also more rumblings of discontent in the complaints department today when new, more FSA-compliant, working methods were introduced. The main consequence of this is that the number of letters we have to send out appears to have increased exponentially. This is not a problem for Jester, who loves writing letters, but many of my colleagues are feeling mutinous about it.

We were trained on the more FSA-friendly (and less jester-friendly) working methods last week. I did my training on Thursday and I immediately noticed an interesting change. We no longer had a trainer but a facilitator. Being the facetious kind of person I am, the first question I asked was, "Why use five syllables when two will do?" I received nine blank stares so I explained: "Fa-ci-li-ta-tor has five syllables. Trai-ner has two." The poor lass who was training us - I mean facilitating us - explained that she is facilitating us and not training us. I later learned from my husband (a policeman and therefore familiar with all things Newspeak) that being trained is very passive and therefore passé. Facilitation is the way forward because our knowledge is facilitated. That is not passive at all. Big Brother would have been proud.

In the morning we did the training, sorry, facilitating that our colleagues in the Call Centre will do. This is designed to generate fewer complaints (putting us in the Complaints Department out of a job, hopefully) but also to ensure that when they are generated, they are logged correctly and in a timely fashion. It was great fun.

We had a "Can say/can't say" session, where I found out that I cannot say: "If you would just let me explain..." or "You should read your policy, Mr So and So..." or "I know you're angry but..." So it appears we can still tell customers to get stuffed. Good.

We then discussed the three different types of customer: passive, aggressive and assertive. We were facilitated in saying that the easiest type to deal with is an assertive customer. I love such simplifications. I know I'm a combination of all three and how I behave is largely a matter of what mood I am in. What is more, when I'm being assertive, I am probably about as difficult as it gets.

We then moved on to "What is a complaint/what isn't a complaint". We had to tick complaints and leave non-complaints blank. Again, simple and great fun.

The afternoon was given over to specific training for complaints handlers. This was the bit we had been warned about and had caused so much rumbling from people who had been facilitated on the two previous days. We went through all the letters we are now going to have to send to our customers and when we are going to have to send them. If we don't want to do it, we will have to close all our complaints at 0 - 2 days old. That is a daunting prospect for all my fellow jesters.

We finished our training at about 4.30pm after a short test (in which I got 100%, thus winning myself an easter egg today) and I left the training room (or should that be facilitation suite) with a nice new note-pad and a spring in my step. I love writing letters.

Today, I helped a few of my epistoliphobic* colleagues with their letters, a welcome relief from speaking to angry customers. I might even have to write a few myself. I'm really looking forward to it.

*Unfortunately, the website I used to identify this phobia did not list it so I made it up with the help of an Online Greek/English dictionary. Other interesting phobias include Thygateraphobia, Paraponophobia and my favourite of all, Choratatzisphobia.

Jester and the Jokes

A long time ago a grizzled and wise old policeman announced to a group of his colleagues: "The problem here is too many people treat this joke as a job." Actually, it was a few years ago, my husband was present and the policeman in question is not much older than my husband and not at all grizzled but the saying is continually springing to my mind at the moment.

I may have mentioned it once or twice: I work in a complaints department. The emphasis is on closing complaints by phone - it's quicker and adds the personal touch. However, we are unable to force our customers to make complaints by phone, they do frequently insist on writing in and we often have to respond in writing, although we prefer not to.

All of their letters are scanned onto our computer system and there is a useful little window where you can see the scanned image of the letter. There is an even more useful button in the window with a picture of a printer on it, which you can use to print off the images so you can read the letter and scribble notes on it. This is great when it works but at the moment it doesn't. Well, it does for a few. Well, part of it does for a few and all it does for even fewer.

On Tuesday and yesterday, I was one of the few people - about 5 or 6 - in the department (we number about 40 people at present) who could see the images. I was also one of the elite who could see the images and had the computer hooked up to a printer that works. We have three printers in the department; all Science Museum material: two of them work but only one of them is reliable. So I was very popular indeed.

Yesterday, they took one of our servers down for maintenance. I logged onto one of the other 3. Well, on the third attempt I did, anyway, and I could now no longer view images. I can still print, so I can write letters but I can't see my customers' letters. Oh and I can't attach my own letters to the complaint log. It transpires that view customers' letters and attaching ours run off the same piece of faulty software. We have to attach our letters to be FSA compliant.

So we, temporarily at least, had a complaints department where we were unable to see our customers' letters or, in the majority of cases, print our own. Which brings me back to the grizzled old policeman. I really do have to agree with him when it comes to the Dark Satanic Mill: Too many people treat this joke as a job.

One last laugh. Our hardware may date from ante-diluvian times and our software may be rubbish but at least we don't the laughable computer systems my husband has to work with. Yet again, the police beats the insurance industry to first place in the god-awful employers stakes.