Landlinx, VAT and call options: HMRC’s famous public disaster

HMRC has of late embraced a ‘customer’-centric language so it would do well to heed a famous case study in customer relations. It runs like this: a household name had long produced an established and well-received formula enjoyed by customers. At some point some boffins in the organisation touted a study suggesting that the organisation should jettison the original formula in favour of one that addressed a newly-perceived ‘threat’ head-on even though the revised formula tore up decades of consistent messaging to customers. The organisation switched formulas. But the study was defective the threat was a false positive and the switch wrought immediate damage on the relationship between the organisation and its now-jittery...