I like being informal, can I still work for big companies?

This is a small frame challenge.

Small towns can get by with a few stop signs and a single red light in the middle of main street. Big cities need more complicated traffic control because they have more moving parts and need more coordination of those parts. Large companies are the same.

What you described doesn't seem so much like "formality" to me. It seems more like being "systematic." And being systematic is a good thing.

For example,

"I have to hand over cases adhering a very strict template..."

This not only helps you to not forget to include information, but it helps the recipient find information they need more readily (provided they are familiar with the structure of the template).

As for

"I have to email the customer and introduce myself even if I know them from previous cases...even if they have opened two cases within few minutes from each other."

Consider that from the customer's point of view. They may know you, but do they know you have been assigned to their particular case? If they have two cases, how do they know the same person has been assigned to each? Maybe they need separate emails so that each case has its own, complete case file. Is it possible the case may later be transferred to a different person at their company that doesn't know you? You can still introduce yourself as the person handling their case, even if you know them, and do it in an informal manner: "Hi Joe, I'm working for company XYZ now and I've been assigned to your case. I'm really happy to get to work with you again...."

I've worked for a large state agency with very systematic onboarding processes. Everything went smoothly and I was able to start on my first day with all my computer equipment, accounts, and passwords ready to go. I can't recall any account access problems during the 9 years I worked there. And I've worked for a large U.S. federal agency with multi-layered security but with informal onboarding processes, and there are constant problems with improperly set up accounts, mis-configured infrastructure, and inability to access needed resources. (Incidentally, the state agency was still "informal." People wore jeans to work and called each other by their first names, etc.)

"I got employed because of the super record in serving customers in my mother tongue."

Even if you, yourself, are super-organized, you will be working with other people who may not be as organized. Consider this article. Most people think of surgeons as smart and organized and motivated. Yet something as simple as checklists have been shown to save lives and improve surgical outcomes:

The Role of WHO Surgical Checklists in Reducing Postoperative Adverse Outcomes: A Systematic Review

Or think of pre-flight checklists used by pilots. Do you really want to get on a plane where the pilots rely solely on their memory and native talent? Pilots are also professional, highly trained, and screened for stability. Yet according to a source cited by Wikipedia "Failure to correctly conduct a preflight check using a checklist is a major contributing factor to aircraft accidents."

So thinking more in terms of being "systematic" and "predictable" rather than merely "formal" may reduce some of the mental chafing you're feeling at the guardrails that are constraining you now. I have a saying where I work now: "I prefer bureaucracy to chaos." Nobody likes to stop at red lights or slow down in school zones. But these things help the entire system run more efficiently overall than an every-man-for-himself approach. Try to think about how the "formalities" may be helping the customer or your fellow workers. You'll find that a well-structured and systematic paper trail often even helps Future You.

Larger companies often keep more formal records, and work in larger companies will often be associated with more paperwork than the same role in smaller companies.

Larger companies also design their workforce operations more around the capability and behaviour of the average worker (because they need bums on their seats and can't afford to be overly picky), and around the need for consistency and sustainability of output.

If you are exceptionally good and talented at your occupation, and self-motivated to do the job, then a workforce job in a big firm could well be stifling unless you're on a fast track to more senior levels.

That's not to say that big firms are always functional or efficient in their behaviours, but most things will tend towards the average and away from true extremes, and most things at the workforce level tend towards being systematic and routine rather than relying on initiative and talent.

Processes like these exists for a number of reasons, not limited to:

• Protecting you - ensuring that you've handled each case to company prescribed process so that if the customer complains, you can show you've done things the right way
• Consistency of service - when customers contact the company, they know they're going to be treated with a consistent level of service from someone who knows how to process their case in the most polite, efficient, and professional manner
• Auditing - if a customer has a problem with how a case has been handled, the case will be audited to ensure that the process has been followed. If it turns out that steps in process have been skipped, or not done correctly, this comes down to you

Additionally, customers may not remember you, even if you remember them. After you go through the introduction phase, it'll be fine to mention you've interacted before and build on that knowledge if that's beneficial to this case.

Professionalism tends to win over loose cannons.

Do I have a chance to work in big companies or I have to go back to the small companies world?

I think you (and anyone) have a chance to work anywhere... as long as you adhere to company policies, procedures and culture.

Those policies are there for a reason, and the "bigger" a company is, the more likely it has very well established (and justified... sometimes...) procedures.

It can be due to an industry standard or certification requiring certain steps, templates or procedures to be respected. It can also be to ease the transition of cases and information between workers on a chain (i.e.: you and this agent that handles it after you did)... so many reasons on why such procedures.

Yes, sometimes there can be objectively "dumb" procedures, or procedures that for you they may seem unreasonable, but in the end you have to stick to them if you want to be part of that ecosystem.

Maybe look at this as a chance for you to mature and grow on your professional skills. It's the first time you work for a "big" company, so you surely are more used to less rigid procedures and protocols, and perhaps a more direct, informal approach; something that not always applies to bigger companies.

Repetitive introduction on each email/case even if the same client? Prepare an email template so you paste it and then customize and work on it, sparing you from typing the greeting again. "Strict" template when handling cases to another agent? You'll get better and faster at it with time, and there are also options here, like making a script or similar that helps you automate the filling (or part of) such templates with more ease.

This and many other ways you can adapt and cope with this new culture and formality that you are not (yet) used to. Of course you can always go back to a smaller company, but I wouldn't do it before first seeing and trying to adapt to this formality.

Disclaimer: I have no experience with customer-facing processes, but I work in an industry which legally requires some processes for the development of products (the details of which are decided by the companies).

I agree with the other answers that you are very likely to find more elaborate processes in larger companies - and that there can be very good reasons for them. So if you can't live with any kind of process overhead, larger companies are likely not for you. But the details can still vary between the individual companies and you may be able to avoid the things that annoy you most.

This is something that you should try to find out during the interview process already. You can ask them how the cases that are currently annoying you would be handled at their company. But I would try to frame it as interest in their way of working, not as an unwillingness to adapt your own way of working.

You can also try to change the processes at your current employer for the better. This has no chance of working for things that you simply don't want to do, but if there are things that are detrimental to your relationship with customers or otherwise have a financial impact, you can certainly bring that up with your boss or with whoever is responsible for those processes. How this is received will vary, of course. You might at least learn the reason behind the processes - maybe there are tradeoffs involved that you are not seeing. If you do bring this up, do it independently of how you are handling any of your current cases. For those you still need to follow the processes that are in place.

In the US, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was introduced as federal law that mandated how publicly traded corporations keep records. The laws are basically to keep everybody honest. Among many regulations, they specify that external audits have to take place with frequency, by law. "SOX" (as it's known) came on the tail of a huge communication company, Worldcom, misrepresenting its financial state and having the end result being the retirement accounts of thousands of employees being wiped out because of their dishonesty. They misrepresented $4 BILLION of revenue, and the CEO went to jail!

If you work for such a public company in the US, THAT'S why there are so many procedures in place. They are there to shield the company from the huge financial liabilities if someone is caught trying to cheat the system. It can be a lot (I deal with this daily) but when you consider the damages to peoples' lives that gross dishonesty can cause, then you can understand that it's reasonable.

That being said, you will have less of what you're experiencing happening if you work for a privately owned company (at least, in the United States). Otherwise, prepare to deal with a lot of regulations.

We all don't like filling in forms and templates. The thing is: If you stop getting angry about it and start optimizing to write it (by e.g. having the standard answers ready to copy&paste and know for all the badly worded questions what you need to put in there, maybe even writing a little automation in excel or bash), you often notice that you only need a few minutes to do this.

If possible, try to group these formal tasks and complete them once a day. It is much faster to hammer in a hundred nails in a row that stop doing your other work to hammer in five every half an hour.

Existing - great - answers address how you can see the formalities from a different perspective, I'm trying to offer other solution.

You've haven't described your role and the industry, but it seems you're serving external customers and maybe even working in a more regulated industry.

You might look for a role where you won't work with externals, just with employees of your own company, that's generally less formal and maybe even more stable projects.

I'm working in a big agriculture company and haven't seen any such formalities even with external consultants / developers, that can be an option for you too.

Reason of the formal style is that big corporates are working very often irrational. Or at least, they are looking irrationally, if you see and know only a little bit of them.

That irrationality is a continuous sources of troubles.

I am thinking on quite brutal things yet.

For example, you are in a department which looks like a "department before pensioners", i.e. full with old guys doing nearly nothing. Well, in such a department is it really, really advisable to honor them greatly, independently what do you think about them. You should feel yourself honored by working in an elite team, at least that should be visible on you.

The reality: you might have right for some people, while maybe a security boss of the department is also among them. He is there because he likes to be there and 30 year at the company made the management thinking, he can be trusted with super secret company data. Others might be there because they could believably threat the company by suing for firing. You have no way to know.

Not even they know it from each other.

Another example: you know that boss is going to hire an external contract for task X, for a lot of money. You could do the same task in a day. Well, it is really, really advicable to not say it, except maybe some hint to the boss saying that you would happily help in related tasks.

Reason: it might be the high school classmate of the boss (country-dependent). Possibly the boss wants to fire you and do not want to make the company more dependent on you. Or the boss is stupid and he has simply no idea that you could really do that task.

In all the cases, we are full with the lack of knowledge, and this lack of knowledge leads mostly to fear of the unknown.

The psychological response: big companies tend to standardize everything, and you want to show that you follow all their rules very well.

Being super-formal makes others think that you are doing it really so.

It is also a psychological help to do it really so.

If you are becoming formal, for example you happily use "informal you" if the language has one, or you are "too honest", you might become an antioxidant in an acidic environment, and the guys living from the acid might consider it as destruction.