The Last Look…

There are those in our industry who genuinely fear for its future due to what they perceive as the inexorable push to uniformity thanks to unimaginative and risk-averse management, as well as, naturally, regulation. I have never really been in that camp, but my experience of the last few days has prompted a few doom and gloom thoughts around the future of sales.

I have just moved house, something that was planned three months ago, and luckily, I have a well-organised spouse who is definitely the yin to my rather chaotic and impulsive yang. All of which makes it even more irritating that our telco couldn’t arrange for something as simple as an internet connection to be transferred.

These things happen, even if it was for the most ridiculous of reasons, and I was, for me, pretty calm about the whole thing…until I spoke to the telco concerned to try to work the problem. There was, apparently, nothing they could do, the original order was made one day early and gave (and I am not making this up) 61 days’ notice, rather than 60. The person on the other end of the line was trying their best but not a lot was happening, at which point I heard, “while I have you on, I notice you don’t have a mobile plan with us…” and they jumped into a pitch for bundling the services.

I naturally asked the question (as politely as I could), “if you can’t arrange an internet transfer with two months’ notice, why would you think for a second I would change mobile provider?” but this was clearly off-script and the conversation descended into meaningless apologies and a case number.

A second call was made after an email gave us (false) hope, at which I called again and got another “helpful” person in the “help” centre, who told me that a new order had been generated and that we were being prioritised, and something would happen “next week”. I enquired if a quicker connection could not be made given it was done automatically and was informed that nothing could be done until I had received my new smart modem…which was the first time anyone had mentioned such a device, as I pointed out. At this point I was a little surprised to hear, “while I have you on, I notice you don’t have a mobile plan with us…” which elicited the same response as before.

Roll forward to this week and the modem arrived, still with no internet. I called, and was told that it would now be 24-48 hours, before the connection could be made and to “keep trying”. I did ask if there was a narrower window of hope, which was met with a sorrowful, ‘no’ followed by…you’ve guessed it; “while I have you on, I notice you don’t have a mobile plan with us…”

It was so clear to me that these people were following a script that it did start me thinking that the FX industry has to proactively avoid going down a tapering road, the destination of which will have everyone sound the same and read from the same script.

To be fair this is not a new phenomenon, years ago during my brief stint on the buy side, one major bank in particular was guilty of ringing the direct line, saying good morning, and then reading, word for word, that morning’s briefing from the strategy team. They didn’t answer questions, just a quick, “have a good day” and they were off to the next poor sap.

They didn’t get much of my business, and as an optimist I think we are OK, but more than one person on the buy side has spoken to me of the uniformity of their bank coverage, especially in the wake of the chat room scandal and the advent of the Global Code. I think a knee-jerk reaction to those events and that document was inevitable, but I quickly checked in with a couple of friends this week who told that in some, and I stress some, institutions, the coverage is still as one put it “robotic”.

Lest anyone forgets, a really strong and lasting relationship is built upon more than just numbers

We are lucky that with experienced people on the buy side, such service is rarely rewarded, so there is, to a degree, a kind of self-regulation taking place, but as those people disappear and people of, how can I put it, a more quant nature, step in, will such robotic service become more prevalent and will it be detrimental to the institution? Several senior managers in our industry have told me in recent years that they are having to push some of their staff to actually pick up a phone – they prefer to do it via chat, or perhaps not at all.

It is, thankfully, a misconception, that the younger generations cannot communicate on anything other than some form of chat function, but how many prefer to do that? I suspect the proportion is quite high – more importantly, many are speaking to customers who prefer to communicate via such channels and as we all know, the customer is always right…

It was heartening to see, and this was observed by fellow attendees, the high number of younger delegates at the recent Full FX London and Copenhagen conferences. This tells me that enough care and have the character to get out and put themselves in the public eye.

This reinforced my impression from the last couple of years that there are many young salespeople who are full of character, wit, and aren’t afraid to take a different road from time to time – the hope is that they are allowed to develop their own style. No doubt they will be good with data and able to discuss it, but lest anyone forget, a really strong and lasting relationship is built upon more than just numbers.

So the younger generations are just as good as their predecessors, in some ways probably better, but they have to be given room to breathe by their institution especially, and importantly, allowed to make mistakes. I have had some great fun, and some really interesting conversations with so many of these people and they can carry the banner of FX forward in the greatest traditions of our business. but we have to help them.

It is up to the current generation of managers to ensure we avoid turning salespeople with character and charisma into an endangered species.

colin@thefullfx.com