While social media was outraged about a clumsy Twitter response by Old Mutual, what irked me the most was an obvious lack of awareness about how we live in a mobile world. In case you missed it, someone complained that their mother’s policy had not been paid out, despite allegedly having a court order.

Old Mutual scores an own goal

Dear @OldMutualSA please advise why you are refusing to release my mother’s money even though a court order has been provided. You are in contempt of court and I am about to lose my cool right now

— Seba (@Seba_S_M) March 5, 2024

Whoever responded from the Old Mutual X / Twitter account posted an A4-formatted PDF trying to explain what the problem was. It was an own goal in so many ways, and the wise heads at a financial institution like Old Mutual must be kicking themselves.

Seemingly, a junior staffer – with no awareness of the brand’s promises and lack of oversight – wrote a poorly worded response, which also misspelt the name of the complainant. The same uninformed responder seems to have replied out of their own frustration – which is hardly the right approach to dealing with a social platform characterised by outrage.

Regarding the tweet from Seba_S_M pic.twitter.com/mix7ynPbXE

— Old Mutual SA (@OldMutualSA) March 8, 2024

The offending PDF, which has over 9-million views, reveals that Old Mutual doesn’t understand that most of us mostly use our mobiles. This is certainly true for Twitter and just about all the other social networks, which I have long deleted from my phone to avoid the pointlessness of doom scrolling.

Old Mutual, like so many big businesses, especially financial institutions, clearly don’t use their own products. If they did, they would notice that the PDF was created on a larger screen and is designed to be read on that 14-inch/35cm screen.

An A4-sized document is very difficult to read on a 6-inch/15cm smartphone screen. This may be a first-world problem, which I readily admit it is, but it is deeply revealing about how out of touch big business is with the actual people who use their services.

I had the same issue with my bank, which sends an email every time there is a credit card payment or transaction on my account.

The only problem for that bank is that nobody has updated its IT policy for over a decade. Back in the 2000s, it became popular for businesses to automatically include a banner advert at the bottom of emails. Probably designed on a 27-inch/68cm iMac, these ads force the text in the email to resize when the banner is loaded. The end result is an impossible-to-read message because the marketing department hasn’t updated its methodology for over 10 years and still thinks such banners are useful.

In fact, all it shows is that the big firm is stuck in old and unworkable methodologies – and clearly doesn’t use its own services. It’s a subtle, perhaps sub-minimal, aspect of this avoidable own goal. But if you don’t know what size screen your customers are using, how much else are you getting wrong about life in the 21st century?