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Norton Sukware and WorkChoices

December 11, 2006 on 5:49 am | In Uncategorized |

I’m currently engaged in an interminable online argument with the Symantec Corporation over problems renewing my subscription to Norton Systemworks, software that we have all been terrorised into buying even though I sometimes suspect that the threats are vastly over-stated.

I won’t bore you with all the details, suffice to say that the renewal process that was supposed to renew my subscription didn’t. The only thing it succeeded in doing was taking my money. So with a sinking heart I contacted the Symantec ‘help’ desk, reflecting as I did so that in many years of computing experience I have yet to encounter a help desk that lives up to its name.

As I feared, the suggestions arriving at two-daily intervals from Symantec have an elegant circularity, as they work their way through the standard responses to customer problem 3(a)[iv] and then begin again. None of the suggestions works of course, but you already knew that. I’m just waiting for the inevitable suggestion that goes something like this: “Lovell sorry you have big problem with our product, please to follow this link and delete all software then reinstall Windows, all fixed then no problem have nice day woo-hoo!’, following which I will write off my $80 and go buy McAfee software from Harvey Norman. I swore off them two years ago when their online subscription renewal fucked up, but at least they didn’t get to take any of my money in the process.

If you’re wondering what all this has to do with WorkChoices, it’s this. We argue in Customer Service courses that poor customer service costs a business money in the long-run. There are several reasons for this but I want to concentrate on one in particular: it’s that the cost of handling customer complaints gets built into a firm’s overheads and can end up being a major cost that eats into profits.

For that reason to be true, a firm has to be actually bearing the cost of handling customer complaints. Under a traditional employment relationship that would be the case. Symantec would be paying help desk operators by the hour; the more hours they have to spend resolving a customer complaint the more it will cost Symantec. Symantec therefore bears the risks associated with poor product design and delivery, and its management has a motive to improve the firm’s systems. If it doesn’t do this profits will decline, shareholders will demand action and the delinquent managers will have to lift their game.

That’s what micro-economic theory says will happen anyway. But it all hangs on workers being paid for time on the job. Imagine for a moment - and I stress that I have no idea what employment relationships are at Symantec*, I’m developing a purely hypothetical example - imagine that help desk operators had been signed up to AWAs and were paid not by time but by results. In other words instead of getting $1,000 for attending work for 38 hours each week, they were required to attend work 38 hours each week and got paid $10 per customer complaint but only after it had been satisfactorily resolved. In other words it doesn’t matter if the problem is fixed after 1 email or 101, the employee gets paid the same. Supporters of WorkChoices would applaud such a result because they would argue it ‘encourages greater efficiency’ by giving workers an incentive to find the right solution quickly.

This is an example of what many employers call ‘flexibility’, a catch-all term that is code for ‘pass risk to employees‘. If help-desk operators are paid a flat fee to resolve customer complaints, Symantec management has no incentive to improve product design or management systems. Workers might have an incentive to find the solution quickly but if the system is faulty or the workers don’t have the right training, that incentive won’t translate into good customer service. Of course the firm might lose a few customers but it’s in an oligopolistic situation and if its main competitor adopts a similarly cavalier attitude to customer service it won’t actually suffer a competitive disadvantage.

Most comments on WorkChoices have focused on the narrow issues of unfair dismissal or pay cuts. The long-term ramifications are much, much broader. By taking a giant step towards restoring a laissez-faire labour market, WorkChoices will change many aspects of our economy and society in ways we haven’t even thought of yet.

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*In fact, if the language in the ‘help’ emails is a reliable indication, the Symantec operators are located in a galaxy far, far away.