I’ll try and be as candid as I can here. There will be decisions made this year that will upset portions of our customer base. They will most likely disproportionately upset the people who have been our customers for the longest amount of time, because things will be normal for people who signed up after the changes were made, much like when we had to introduce ATM fees or when we removed the top-up ability. These decisions need to be made to ensure that the company can continue to exist and move towards profitability in more trying times.
That’s as much as I can tell you right now, because it’s as much as I know - but Tom has made this point very clear in the last few weeks.
It’s not going to be fun. Furloughing a large amount of staff is a temporary measure, and it’s very possible that the economic situation will continue to be poor at a point where furlough is no longer an option, and decisions will need to be made on the basis of revenue to ensure the company can continue.
This particular experiment, as I mentioned, was started before the pandemic hit. But the reality of the pandemic means it was a necessary measure and will almost certainly continue (short of the data showing that it makes no difference, which isn’t likely). We need to invest in more self-service tools to ensure that users have the ability to solve problems themselves and not need to contact chat.
With that being said, users not being able to get in touch when they need to is absolutely not the desired outcome of this, and it’s possible the balance isn’t right yet. I’m hoping that we can get a staff member more directly involved with this to perhaps shed a little more light so please watch this space.
In the meantime, I hope that me being as candid as I can possibly be with the information that I personally have can be taken as a sign of good faith, because it’s really important to me that we maintain this dialogue 