It astonishes me how every year the burden seems to increase on small businesses to comply with government legislation, new technology, ever increasing levels of security, and worsening levels of service from the big institutions, writes John Mayer.
All that work is on top of all the other pressures small businesses must cope with in maintaining customer service levels, coping with late payments and having increasingly less time to handle all of this due to the added administration we have to deal with.
This is not helped by the big institutions - such as the banks and HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) - who increasingly have decreasing service levels.
Take the HMRC, for example, who many businesses will have been dealing with in the run up to the January 31 tax deadline. As accountants we are virtually not allowed to phone HM
RC now on behalf of our clients and we are instead pressured to go down the digital route which, for a large part, can be frustrating to access, negotiate, and understand. And it takes us far more time too.
What happened to good old-fashioned personal service? If I had a wish for 2024 it would be for us to have a less digitalised business environment and for more direct personal service instead.
I really appreciate many of the small businesses I deal with who do provide that high level of personal service levels still and I certainly think we should be encouraged where we can to deal with small local businesses who understand this ethos. So, let us all make a concerted effort in the year ahead to deal with the smaller local businesses for by doing so we also drive more income into our local economies from which we all benefit.
Sadly, the big institutions are ones we cannot ignore. I accept that a lot of their issues are due to staffing levels (and the rising cost of them) and as with many industries the institutions may be struggling to recruit staff, particularly skilled staff. However, HMRC have a monopoly and I do question whether they would exist in the way they do in a private sector environment - if my business provided the service HMRC gives I certainly think some clients may quickly seek alternative service suppliers.
Institutions like this should be taken to task and be made to have a look at small businesses to see what good customer service levels are all about!
*John Mayer is the FSB area lead for Somerset. He runs an accountancy business in Weston-super-Mare. This comment article first appeared in the Western Daily Press newspaper in early February.
