Employment agency dissatisfaction with insurable Credit Limits is an issue

The Credit Crunch is having an adverse affect on customer satisfaction says Tom Atkinson, Chief Executive at Cash Simply.

We run a monthly on line Customer Satisfaction survey and continuously index the results. (A Customer Satisfaction Index - CSI) Any reduction we seek to address. Sometimes however, there are factors outside of our control. The index figure has reduced this month and it has reduced because of dissatisfaction with credit limits. Credit limits for debt protected debt are causing below average levels of satisfaction with our services.

Despite outsourcing to one of the biggest and most liberal credit insurers in the world, we cannot get the levels of protected debt for UK clients that our employment agency customers would like.

We are tackling this in two ways. The first is to speak with the insurers. Whilst ours have clearly been following a worldwide trend as the stability of companies across the world, and in the UK in particular, has been brought into question, they have been much more sanguine than most. Understandably they have moved with what they believed was a necessary degree of caution. Even they however, have perhaps overreacted (time will tell) and of recent days we are seeing levels start to rise again, which hopefully will start to be reflected in our customer satisfaction levels. What we are definitely seeing is that UK clients who are filing company accounts late are having their credit limits severely reduced. It seems the underwriters are saying to themselves Why are they late? and answering Either they are in an administrative mess or they have something they are trying to hide as long as possible and marking their credit limits down.

The second way is to do some expectation management. In the recruitment industry it seems that despite the mass media reporting, we still have many employment agencies that have not yet recognised there has been a Credit Crunch and expect insurable debt to be at levels they were this time last year. This seems to particularly be the case where part of their work is with government funded publicly bodies (Schools, Care Homes, NHS etc) and they have seen business levels rise without impediment but the private sector for schools, Care Homes and hospitals etc, where the tough market has caused those bodies to come under close financial scrutiny, has seen severe credit limit reductions.

Overall, we believe we are noticing a little more confidence as the level of UK company failures seems to be slowing (particularly in construction it seems) so we are hoping that the August CSI will show a significant improvement in this area.

Tom Atkinson
www.cashsimply.com