Yesterday’s cockup at the Home Office centre in Croydon provides some textbook examples of how Orwellian “Newspeak” infects the service sector. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/home-office-immigration-croydon-queue-sopra-steria-a8867706.html
Both the Home Office and their contractor, Sopra Steria, evidently aim to outdo the airlines in their use of vacuous phrases that combine phoney earnestness with a hint of contempt for the people they are meant to serve.
One of the favoured techniques of companies that have given disastrously bad service is to affirm what ought to be the truth, as if that turns their cock-up into an exception that proves the rule. So a services company whose system failure leaves scores of people out in the cold declares that, “A positive customer experience is vital to the service we provide…”
Indeed, one might have thought so. If only they had said, “Our customers ought to receive good service but they didn’t because we screwed up; and if we don’t fix it fast then the Home Office is going to terminate our contract and we’ll all be out of a job.” Now that would have won back some respect.
A particular favourite with companies that have stuffed up is to say, as Sopra did on this occasion, “We are working closely with our customers…” How else were they considering working with them: remotely? Doubtless they would if they could.
The Home Office trotted out the same meaningless babble: “We are working closely with Sopra Steria to ensure that any customers affected…blah blah blah.” Judging by the customers’ comments, most of them would probably prefer the Home Office to stop working with Sopra Steria altogether.
An especially annoying tactic of the services industry is to try and downplay the severity of a problem by belittling it. On this occasion the company’s spokesperson said that a technical problem, “affected our ability to process a small number of appointments”. How comforting for those affected, to know that they were just the unlucky few.
This linguistic disease infects everything from the most trivial cases to the most serious. How many times have we heard statements like, “The safety of our customers is our highest priority”, in response to an air crash where the cause is suspected to be a failure in the safety procedures of the company making that claim? Orwell coined the term Newspeak in part to convey the dangers of misusing language to pretend one thing while meaning the opposite. We have a duty to call it out whenever we hear it.
