I live in an area of Central London where street parking is a fact of life. Last year a negligent driver performed a u-turn and collided with a Deliveroo motorcyclist. Thankfully no one was hurt badly, although my nearby parked car bore the full impact of the careering motorcycle. My insurer, Zurich Insurance Company, finally organised and settled the £400 repairs after endless reminders over several weeks. This is an insurer whose CEO, Tim Bailey, trumpeted his firm’s support services on winning an Insurance Times Claims Achievement Award “for keeping customers at the heart of what we do”. That message seems to have escaped his underwriting and pricing teams. The renewal offer landed this week with a 10% increase and a nearly two-fold increase in the deductible to £750 due to the “overnight parking location of the vehicle”. The car has been parked, as have prior owned cars in the exact same street for 2,000 night previously without any damage! Tell me reinsurance or loss costs have risen fair enough to justify premium rises but not a one-in-a-million loss caused by a third party…

If the past 6 months are any indication, you are 8 times more likely to get stopped by TfL, London’s transport network, for not paying a fare than not wearing a face covering.

A hardcore 35%+ of self-obsessed and unwitting travellers on London’s public transport and TfL employees, have made a choice to ignore the automated messages telling them that they are obliged to protect themselves.

Today, the UK Government makes it a legal requirement to wear face coverings.

When pressed about holding travellers on the network to account, the spineless TfL leadership say they won’t address it, other than call the police! These bosses are ultimately accountable to London’s Mayor, Sadiq Khan. He deflects attention on health issues other than to claim UK Government underfunding is crippling the London network and economy.

Don’t you think if he and his TfL leadership took ownership of the systemic health risk, his commercial case would be strengthened? Perhaps common sense is more difficult than we think.

My health insurer, Axa PPP Healthcare writes to tell me from 1st January, I can book a 20 minute same-day video appointment with a Virtual UK GP 24/7, anywhere in the world.

My fixed line, broadband and television provider, BT plc, sends a faulty television box, and their Belfast-based technician tells me his employer won’t allow him to be connected by FaceTime, WhatsApp etc. with me to quickly test and resolve the matter. He must get one of his colleagues to send at significant mail expense another £250 unit. I should wait 3-4 days and I must self-install to see if it works. If I am unsuccessful, I should call him (15 min wait on an automated answering service) and discuss how to claim a credit.

BT Group plc is a limited-growth business, whose market cap has shrunk by 80% over the past 5 years, and ~40% alone, in the 21 months since Jansen has been at the helm. Only Telefonica SA in the big 6 international telcos (45% decrease LTM) has experienced worse performance.

“We feel — I feel — that really BT is undervalued for the kind of business that we are and the assets that we have,” Philip Jansen, told Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media and Telecom conference last week.

Perhaps he should start by shopping his own business. The answer is at the end of his phone line.

When you are a digital platform that offers interested prospects a trial of your product or service (“window shopping”) but refuses them entry and the opportunity to experience it, you remind me of the store that is still hanging the “closed” sign, long past 10 o’clock on a regular trading day.

“That is a shame, let’s go next door!” Then again, perhaps the management have never shopped their own business.

Winner: Martin Griffiths, CEO of Stagecoach, one of the UK’s rail franchisees.

Boarding a recent train from the Midlands to London with my 9yo daughter, we found sweltering carriages, no ability to sit in our reserved seats, a train with 100 people standing, children crying, no food and beverage and no offers of assistance by the train crew. With no prior announcements to passengers or communication on the entire trip, it was an appalling customer experience. This is not an isolated incident judging by recent customer comments.

A note seeking an explanation from the Company’s CEO with images, some 3+ weeks later remains unanswered. For a company embroiled in an ugly dispute with the UK transport regulators, over exclusion from the bidding process (unwillingness to take on the funding requirements for railway workers pension liabilities), this is a PR disaster. Perhaps Mr Griffiths and his firm’s real priority is not his customers’ welfare but their own enrichment.

This month’s Idiotic Management Award goes to Mark Taylor, Chief Customer Officer and his firm, Equiniti. A designated share dealing and management company for many of Europe’s leading multinationals, where the simple act of trying to sell share certificates online is a horrible customer experience. Disruptors bang on the doors of Investor Relations in companies like Royal Dutch Shell, GSK, InterContinental Hotels, Sky plc, they need you!

To enter your date of birth, requires 10 seconds clicking on a clock counter, cumbersome and duplicate data entry, regular error messages when you have entered the correct details directing you to call one of their customer representatives, where you are met with “your held in a queue, we are busy” and a 10 plus minute wait if you are lucky. You are then hit with a £45 minimum charge and asked to mail in certificates on the understanding the trade will happen the next day and settlement received two to three working days later. This is 2018, not 1988.

Customers expect both speed (responsiveness) and quality (experience). Are you “shopping” the simplest of customer experiences and making it near seamless? When I call your main telephone number, am I able to quickly communicate with the most relevant individual with minimal effort? When I scour your website do I find a very clear point of contact, who I can contact immediately and if they are not available my message is answered within 90 minutes or am I asked to jump through hoops? Does it reflect a professional and contemporary service image or like Equiniti something out of the “telex” age?

© James Berkeley 2018. All Rights Reserved.

In the rush to offer enhanced value to HSBC’s Premier customers, their Privileges Programme boldly announces a partnership with LoungeKey, a tech-driven airline lounge access provider. You are encouraged to register through multiple channels. Try doing it through mobile in the UK, and at the sixth attempt, you are denied. You are then directed to an online page, to try to figure out an alternative. Sorry, we don’t have the time. Has HSBC’s management ever shopped this partnership? If they have, they must concur that the user experience is a classic example of a failed partnership between a tech platform and an incumbent. If they haven’t, they are idiots.

© James Berkeley 2017. All Rights Reserved.