How long does it take you to respond to your e-mails and other correspondence?  (Do you respond? 😉 )

What is a reasonable response time?

This is a perennial issue with government bureaucracies.

And what about trying to talk to someone in a large organisation – public or private – on the phone?

If you can do it, how long does it take to get the answer you seek?

Minutes?  Days?  Weeks?  Longer…?

From time to time the difficulty that members of the public have in dealing directly with large bureaucracies pops up in the news or on some shock ‘current affairs’ program.

And it is always that.

A difficulty.

Rarely do we hear about successes.

Three weeks ago I talked about my experiences in asking questions about what my my big money is being used for.   That’s because being conscious about where my big money is invested and growing offers me the biggest opportunity to make a real difference to living sustainably.

I mentioned how slow my superannuation funds had been about responding.

And I suggested one reason why that might be.

You see, a little while ago I had written to them using the form letter on The Vital Few website.

That bit was very easy.

But, unlike some armchair activism, there was little room to tailor the form letter on The Vital Few‘s form letter.

You can choose from 4 letters.  But you can’t tailor them.

So the net result of lots of people using the letters is more like each fund receiving a postcard campaign or petition asking for the answers for certain questions…rather than individual letters that demand individual replies.

And I expected that the response to my letter – if I got one – would be a standard response.

When I have received responses in the past to my personal letters of enquiry, that’s what I got.  A bland, standard response.

This time, I have been wondering:

(a)    if I would get a response

(b)    if the response would be a standard letter

(c)    if I would receive any worthwhile information in response to my questions.

And so I waited.

And then an e-mail came from one of my funds, asking for more information…apparently so that they could give me a personalised response to my questions about the climate change risks faced by – and caused by – my retirement funds. 🙂

So I sent it.  (And I sent my membership details to my other fund, as I chased up their response too.)

The e-mail trail indicated that it took my fund a while to get moving on the issue, but once it did, it was moving pretty fast (for bureaucracy).

Wow!

E-mails indicating that at least one superannuation fund has engaged with the issue and is now working hard on responding individually. 😮

Big wheels might take a while to get moving.

But once they do, if they have the right power behind them, they can gather a lot of momentum.

We are the power…so we need to keep up the pressure so that those big wheels can move forward.

I’d love to know your thoughts.  Just write in the Reply box below…or send me a voice message by clicking on the tab on the right.

Till next time…be gentle to yourself and our world!