Support Our Troops! If It’s Not Too Much Work…

When I was in Uni, I took a job answering pay queries for the UK armed forces and veterans as part of a supported launch for a self-service admin tool. The call centre was the first point of contact for all queries, but there were specialist “back office” teams that dealt with complex queries.

After a couple of months, I was made part of a review team to figure out why a high number of queries were getting bounced from the back offices. One of the most common requests was for a tax form you are meant to receive when you leave the armed forces but which tends to get lost quite a lot.

I found that a particular member of the back office team had written a boilerplate script which basically amounted to “go find it yourself.” That was bad enough, but when I found one particular email, my blood started to boil.

A fairly young vet had emailed a very detailed account of his efforts to track down this form (which, honestly, was everything in his power). He then literally begged us to help because, if he couldn’t provide this form to the local benefits office by the end of the week, he and his family — including a young baby — were in danger of losing their housing.

What did my colleague do? That’s right, he just sent his standard reply and bounced it back to us. I wrote my manager a formal complaint and escalated this to everyone I could find until it was passed on to someone else in the back office team, who reopened the case. I don’t know if the first guy ever got spoken to, but I’d have had a few words if I’d found him.