Soundbytes: Don?t Shoot the Standard Barer

Disintermediation the management gurus call it ? to mortals like us it means cutting out the middle man. Why pay commission to someone whose only function is to pass on orders or shift stock, when you can deal directly with the customer and pocket the difference?

I appreciate that this is likely to send a shiver down the spine of any dealer or reseller, so let me set your minds at rest and say that I?m not talking about the IT industry ? nor even, ultimately, about disintermediation. Trouble is, I?ve decided Bray Enterprises needs a spot of BPR. Since the corporation essentially consists of me sitting at a desk in my spare bedroom, I?ve decided that the only way to become more efficient is to automate. Which is where the paragraph on disintermediation comes in ? or, at least, why it comes in.

Let me explain. With the help of The Homeowner?s Guide to Business Process Re-engineering (Part Two FREE with Part One), I?ve identified my core business processes. This wasn?t very difficult, since I only have one process, namely writing articles like this one. Now I?m attempting to automate it, and to be honest I?m having some problems. Take the first paragraph of this piece. I asked my Standard Copywriter software, version 1.0a, to produce something pithy for Soundbytes, and look what it came up with. Now I?ve had to spend a quarter of the article apologising for it.

Talking of apologies and disintermediation, I had one the other day from RAC Insurance Services (an apology that is, not a disintermediation). The company was disintermediated last year, by becoming part of insurance group Guardian Royal Exchange, which means it can now only sell GRE policies. No matter, said the covering letter with my car insurance renewal. ?We have invested in new systems and processes and, because we deal direct, we have cut our car insurance premiums substantially in most cases.?

Except that my premium had not been cut. It had gone up by 22 per cent. Fearing that perhaps the systems and processes which sent out the renewal letter were not among the ones the RAC had improved, I wrote to point out the error. By return of post came the reply, from a Mrs Deller. She was concerned to learn that my premium had increased, but ?the rating structure now being used prevents me from making a direct comparison with that of last year?.

Allow me to make it for you, Mrs Deller. Compare this year?s premium of #219.69 with last year?s of #179.54, and you will see an increase of 22 per cent. Your computer system could have made a similar comparison and omitted the sentence about the substantial reductions. Who knows? I might not have noticed the price hike, and renewed with you anyway. But it didn?t make the comparison, as Mrs Deller explained: ?I appreciate the letter you received is not appropriate as your premium has increased, however, the letters are sent out automatically as a promotional tool.?

Aha! So it was a ?standard letter?. Just press a key, do a batch, and forget about customer service. No need to read it. It must be right, it?s come off the computer. ?Our customers (sic) comments are always taken seriously in an effort to improve our service,? Mrs Deller concluded. Well, here?s a tip from an ex-customer: if you?re going to send standard letters, get them right.

There is nothing wrong with standard letters. I have also received one from the underwriters that issued last year?s policy, who had obviously decided to do a bit of disintermediation themselves. They offered me a discount (on what would anyway have been a cheaper premium), and I accepted. This, too, looked like a standard letter, despite the fake signature. But it was timely and correct, so the sender got the business.

Not that RAC Insurance Services does much better when it sends custom-written letters. While researching an article about the millennium problem, I wrote to all the big organisations of which I?m a customer, asking what they were doing about it. Most of the replies boiled down to ?don?t worry, we?ll see that everything is all right?. But the man from RACIS was more expansive. Having pointed out that many firms will face substantial costs to rectify the bug, he reassured me that: ?Thankfully, RAC Insurance Services is well placed to deal with this problem. Our mainframe systems are not Microsoft or PC-based, and therefore be unaffected (sic).?

That?s all right, then. I hadn?t realised the millennium bug only affected PCs, and that all those creaking legacy systems were OK because they were mainframe-based. Actually, the RAC is usually very good at IT, and I don?t really think that the letter I received reflects its approach to the millennium bug. Perhaps it should prepare a standard letter on the subject.