Working Times
In Client Services the working times are severely complicating a life outside of IMD. The shifts can be 8am-5pm, 10am-7pm, 11am-8pm and 12am-9pm. Roughly every four weeks you are also "OnCall", which means you are available for broadcaster and client requests until midnight. Also every six to seven weeks you will be OnCall for a whole weekend. Overtime is a normality especially with the 8pm and 9pm shifts. Overtime gets paid though.
Work Appreciation
Client Services does not have a valued position in the company, attempts to communicate faulty workflows and mismatches of workload and staffing are simply brushed off. If clients complain that requests are not dealt with in a timely manner the blame falls on the Client Services department. This crushes morale and motivation among the CS-Team and taints the office atmosphere.
Support from Management
In 2015 the company completely shifted its culture from "the client is king" to a "push-back" mentality focussing on more self-service for all clients and less service executed by IMD in order to ultimately reduce the customer service workforce and focus on software solutions. This itself can be a great idea, but Client Services is pretty much left alone with how to communicate and enforce this shift with clients, who are used to being treated as king for decades.
The regular monthly updates are a great idea, but they are solely used as an internal marketing tool, never as a way of honest communication between management and employees.
Employee Satisfaction
The staff turnover is higher than in any other organisation I've been, you are invited to leaving drinks on a monthly basis.
IMD started off as a family, but they lost themselves on the way by being obessed with excessive growth forgetting to invest sustainably in staff.
