Post by mrclondon on Nov 9, 2013 14:22:18 GMT
Thread recovered from offline copy, appologies if one or more posts have gone AWOL.
merlin said:
"I feel sure that several people employed or even part of FC will not sleep very well in their beds tonight. I have no doubt they started the day believing that at last they had killed off the FC Independent Forum only to find that a new and potentially far more powerful beast has been reincarnated in its place.
Not only must they have paid good money to buyout the Indie but in the process have created a considerable amount of unwanted but also undesirable publicity in the process. This frankly IMHO does not strike me as a management that is on top of the job and particularly so those who run/moderate the FC Forum. For a long time there has been criticism of the FC forum's over bearing moderation of posts in a manner which strikes of censorship. Only today more complains were raised about members posting and having their posts heavily chopped down. and I seem to have lost two complete less than complimentary posts without explanation!
What I find really appalling is the failure of FC management to realise that the forum is a window into the mind set with which their management operate. Thus by trying to avoid criticism through the employment of excessive moderation and elsewhere failing to reply to requests for information etc. they are saying to their members "don't tell us what is wrong with our business, just go away". This type of attitude is about 50 years out of date. Modern progressive businesses constantly seek feedback both good or ill to enable them to better serve their customers, improve the business and in so doing grow and make more money.
The only thing I can think is that success has gone to their heads and the management are now becoming rather too arrogant. The business is obviously awash with cash and they have recently become multinational with their tie-up in the USA. Perhaps the business has outgrown its current management. This is often the case where a business grows at the speed that FC has done. It is also worth noting that entrepreneurs often don't make good business managers and although entrepreneurs are great at creating new ideas and new businesses they are rarely any good at the more mundane tasks that are so important in modern business and this includes good customer relations! "
mrclondon said:
"At least they seem to have given up on moderating that thread - my mention of the zopa forum thread I had started was removed, but another mention today by someone else has remained. PM is still down though.
Bizarre as it may sound, the best route forward for FC at this point is actually to close their own forum which is increasingly becoming discredited, and allow Jon & Becky to contribute here. That's what a forward thinking management would do after witnessing the events of the last 48 hours. Not that the current management team will though.
During 2012 I visited the FC office twice to take part in customer focus interviews with middle/senior managers. At the time I felt my thoughts (aka constructive criticisms) which stretched well beyond the subject matter that was the focus group purpose were genuinely being welcomed and acted upon. When in May this year a third request arrived, I replied by email with a fairly detailed explanation of why I was becoming increasingly dis-satisfied with the way FC was being managed. I don't mince my words [my day job is consultancy work with FTSE100 / multi-national corporations] to the extent that I said "Funding Circle is probably now 'too big to fail' but is in grave danger of becoming just another arrogant financial services company", and declined the opportunity to visit their office which is just 20 minutes from both my office and home. They digested the email, had a meeting, and made all the right noises ... but very little has changed in the intervening months. My suspicion is the middle management are struggling to cope with the day to day running of the operation whilst being bombarded with the EXPAND NOW !! EXPAND FAST !! message from senior management.
The value of my FC loan book has been largely static over the last 12 months with repayments reinvested but all fresh funds directed to other P2P platforms. I suspect I'll continue with this approach through 2014. "
merlin said:
"Many thanks for your feedback and additional contribution Mrclondon. It seems that our backgrounds are rather similar except that in my case I retired from consultancy and as a lecturer in top business schools nearly a decade ago. However I still have several non-exec roles in business and occasionally still get dragged out to do the odd lecture etc. I must admit I have found the growth of FC extremely interesting over the last 18 months and they should be congratulated for achieving this but their customer relations deserve no plaudits at all!
What I find really sad is the FC seem to get stroppy even when you offer them advice for free. When I retired my average daily fee rate for consultancy was well over £2k per day and my lecturing fees on short course programmes a very great deal more.
I too have reigned in my investments in FC since the Spring as interest rates obtainable have fallen far too low for higher rate tax payers. Assetz and other providers are now filling the gap. My big hope is that they prosper and don't develop FC customer relations disease in the process!"
bracknellboy said:
"TBH, I'm not sure they cared or care one way or the other as to whether an independent forum came back up. They probably expected it, but whether they expected it to happen quite so zippily is another matter. I think their primary motivation was to get "their URL" and with it ensure brand protection, and to clear up a situation where on the face of it competitor(s) were actively able to use the board to 'advertise' on a url which had FCs name planted all over it. For me the issue is the way the closure was handled: and I think this is where the 'corporate types' have stuck to a line that probably sounded very sane in meeting rooms, but looks utterly mad from the outside: and that is, not allow/encourage/insist on a grace period which would allow a smoothish switchover, presumably the objection being that they viewed the indie forums membership as a 'capture' of their customer database, and therefore allowing such a switchover would not sort out the second issue of advantage gained by 3rd parties "advertising" to that base.
Of course the flip side of that logic is that the people you are about to upset royally are......a chunk of your customer base. But maybe they simply felt that was a cost worth bearing for the outcome. "
merlin said:
"I feel sure that several people employed or even part of FC will not sleep very well in their beds tonight. I have no doubt they started the day believing that at last they had killed off the FC Independent Forum only to find that a new and potentially far more powerful beast has been reincarnated in its place.
Not only must they have paid good money to buyout the Indie but in the process have created a considerable amount of unwanted but also undesirable publicity in the process. This frankly IMHO does not strike me as a management that is on top of the job and particularly so those who run/moderate the FC Forum. For a long time there has been criticism of the FC forum's over bearing moderation of posts in a manner which strikes of censorship. Only today more complains were raised about members posting and having their posts heavily chopped down. and I seem to have lost two complete less than complimentary posts without explanation!
What I find really appalling is the failure of FC management to realise that the forum is a window into the mind set with which their management operate. Thus by trying to avoid criticism through the employment of excessive moderation and elsewhere failing to reply to requests for information etc. they are saying to their members "don't tell us what is wrong with our business, just go away". This type of attitude is about 50 years out of date. Modern progressive businesses constantly seek feedback both good or ill to enable them to better serve their customers, improve the business and in so doing grow and make more money.
The only thing I can think is that success has gone to their heads and the management are now becoming rather too arrogant. The business is obviously awash with cash and they have recently become multinational with their tie-up in the USA. Perhaps the business has outgrown its current management. This is often the case where a business grows at the speed that FC has done. It is also worth noting that entrepreneurs often don't make good business managers and although entrepreneurs are great at creating new ideas and new businesses they are rarely any good at the more mundane tasks that are so important in modern business and this includes good customer relations! "
mrclondon said:
"At least they seem to have given up on moderating that thread - my mention of the zopa forum thread I had started was removed, but another mention today by someone else has remained. PM is still down though.
Bizarre as it may sound, the best route forward for FC at this point is actually to close their own forum which is increasingly becoming discredited, and allow Jon & Becky to contribute here. That's what a forward thinking management would do after witnessing the events of the last 48 hours. Not that the current management team will though.
During 2012 I visited the FC office twice to take part in customer focus interviews with middle/senior managers. At the time I felt my thoughts (aka constructive criticisms) which stretched well beyond the subject matter that was the focus group purpose were genuinely being welcomed and acted upon. When in May this year a third request arrived, I replied by email with a fairly detailed explanation of why I was becoming increasingly dis-satisfied with the way FC was being managed. I don't mince my words [my day job is consultancy work with FTSE100 / multi-national corporations] to the extent that I said "Funding Circle is probably now 'too big to fail' but is in grave danger of becoming just another arrogant financial services company", and declined the opportunity to visit their office which is just 20 minutes from both my office and home. They digested the email, had a meeting, and made all the right noises ... but very little has changed in the intervening months. My suspicion is the middle management are struggling to cope with the day to day running of the operation whilst being bombarded with the EXPAND NOW !! EXPAND FAST !! message from senior management.
The value of my FC loan book has been largely static over the last 12 months with repayments reinvested but all fresh funds directed to other P2P platforms. I suspect I'll continue with this approach through 2014. "
merlin said:
"Many thanks for your feedback and additional contribution Mrclondon. It seems that our backgrounds are rather similar except that in my case I retired from consultancy and as a lecturer in top business schools nearly a decade ago. However I still have several non-exec roles in business and occasionally still get dragged out to do the odd lecture etc. I must admit I have found the growth of FC extremely interesting over the last 18 months and they should be congratulated for achieving this but their customer relations deserve no plaudits at all!
What I find really sad is the FC seem to get stroppy even when you offer them advice for free. When I retired my average daily fee rate for consultancy was well over £2k per day and my lecturing fees on short course programmes a very great deal more.
I too have reigned in my investments in FC since the Spring as interest rates obtainable have fallen far too low for higher rate tax payers. Assetz and other providers are now filling the gap. My big hope is that they prosper and don't develop FC customer relations disease in the process!"
bracknellboy said:
"TBH, I'm not sure they cared or care one way or the other as to whether an independent forum came back up. They probably expected it, but whether they expected it to happen quite so zippily is another matter. I think their primary motivation was to get "their URL" and with it ensure brand protection, and to clear up a situation where on the face of it competitor(s) were actively able to use the board to 'advertise' on a url which had FCs name planted all over it. For me the issue is the way the closure was handled: and I think this is where the 'corporate types' have stuck to a line that probably sounded very sane in meeting rooms, but looks utterly mad from the outside: and that is, not allow/encourage/insist on a grace period which would allow a smoothish switchover, presumably the objection being that they viewed the indie forums membership as a 'capture' of their customer database, and therefore allowing such a switchover would not sort out the second issue of advantage gained by 3rd parties "advertising" to that base.
Of course the flip side of that logic is that the people you are about to upset royally are......a chunk of your customer base. But maybe they simply felt that was a cost worth bearing for the outcome. "
Or not that simple ?
