Financial services companies are often very bad at communicating their strategic decisions to the employees who actually deal with customers, according to a leading personnel consultant.

EA Consulting Group Global Chairman Steve Robson told insuranceNEWS.com.au companies often don’t talk to the people who man their call centres and work in other client-facing roles.

“It is also important to talk to the clients about how a change or a strategy will affect them,” he said. “[Managers] in companies just don’t join up all the dots.”  

Mr Robson says EA was once retained by a US credit card company to discover why it kept losing customers.

“The customer had to ring a number to activate the card and when they did, a team aggressively sold insurance to them,” he said.

“After a week they had to ring another number to confirm they wanted the insurance to go ahead, and most then cancelled the policy and the card.

“Management saw the first team as fantastic as they were successful, and the second team that handled the cancellations as a failure.”

Mr Robson says the credit card company never thought about talking to customers about their experience with the company or the team that was taking all the cancellations.

“The call centre will often have a different view on a move by management,” he said. “Also, call centre staff are often customers of the company, so their views on a change are important.

“Management should talk to them through the process being undertaken rather than just delivering a script on the day changes are happening.”

Mr Robson also cited the merger of two UK insurance companies where the call centre was told of the event on the day the announcement was in the media.

“Nobody in either company though the people in the call centres mattered.”