I may be a saddo, but every year that passes means that the internet becomes more essential to me. My, and TechMarketView’s, operations are totally reliant on the web. I have many backups – like battery power, more than one access method, several ISPs etc – to ensure constant access.
Like many businesses, at the heart of our financial operations is our access to our bank accounts. Since 6.00am this morning we – and about 1/3rd of UK businesses - have been unable to use their online Lloyds Banking accounts because of a technical fault. As always it is NOT the fault itself that drives me to distraction. It was how Lloyds are dealing with it. At first, when I couldn’t log in, I thought it might be me so phoned the help line (opens at 7.00am…). 30 minutes in hold and I was told it was a technical problem. I could have avoided that if Lloyds had put a status message on the login page – easy to do! So I then resorted to Twitter. No announcement there either except that if you Tweet @AskLloydstsb they will tell you individually that they have a problem. No estimated time to fix either.
So if you are waiting on a payment from us (or any other Lloyds Bank user) you might be in for long, frustrating wait.
When will big organisations ever learn that the very best way to handle problems is to admit to them straightaway and get the message out to customers before they resort to contacting you?