While social media was outraged about a clumsy response on X by Old Mutual, what irked me the most was an obvious lack of awareness about how we live in a world of mobile technology.
In case you missed it, someone complained that their mother’s policy had not been paid out, despite an alleged court order for Old Mutual to do so.
Whoever responded from the company’s X account posted an A4-formatted PDF trying to explain what the problem was. It was an own goal in so many ways, and the wise heads at Old Mutual must be kicking themselves.
Seemingly, a junior staffer — with no awareness of the brand’s promises and lack of oversight — wrote a poorly worded response, which also misspelt the name of the complainant. (I’m deliberately not mentioning names because, well, it’s social media and the case involved has neither been investigated nor publicised.)
The same uninformed responder seems to have replied out of their own frustration — hardly the right approach on a platform that is characterised by outrage.
The offending PDF, which had been seen 9-million times by Monday morning, reveals that Old Mutual doesn’t understand that most of us mainly use our phones to read communications. This is certainly true for X and just about all the other social networks, which I have long deleted from my phone to avoid the pointlessness of doomscrolling.
Old Mutual, like so many big businesses, especially financial institutions, clearly doesn’t use its own products. If it did, it would notice that the PDF was created on a larger screen and designed to be read on that 14-inch/35cm screen.
Old Mutual’s ham-fisted response shows it is stuck in old and unworkable methodologies – and clearly doesn’t use its own services
An A4-sized document is difficult to read on a 6-inch/15cm smartphone screen. I readily admit that this may be a First World problem, but it is deeply revealing about how out of touch big businesses are with the people who use their services.
I had the same issue with my bank, which sends an e-mail every time there is a credit card payment or transaction on my account.
The only problem for that bank (again, I’m being polite) is that nobody has updated its IT policy for more than a decade. Back in the 2000s, it became popular for businesses to automatically include a banner advert at the bottom of e-mails. Probably designed on a 27-inch/68cm iMac, these ads force the text in the e-mail to resize when the banner is loaded. The result is an impossible-to-read message, because the marketing department hasn’t updated its methodology and still thinks such banners are useful.
As Old Mutual’s ham-fisted response shows, it is stuck in old and unworkable methodologies — and clearly doesn’t use its own services.
It’s a subtle, perhaps subliminal, aspect of this avoidable own goal. But if you don’t know what size screen your customers are using, how much else are you getting wrong about life in the 21st century?
*Shapshak is editor-in-chief of Stuff.co.za and executive director of Scrolla.Africa
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.