I recently read an article about a unemployed cancer patient sending in her first COBRA patient. She didn’t get a letter notifying her of the amount. So she calculated it herself. Turns out that her payment was $0.01 (one cent!) short. This caused the company to deny the coverage. (Read the full article http://tinyurl.com/Cancerpatient ).
If you were in line at the grocery store and the person in front of you was 1 penny short, I’m sure that most of you would reach into your pocket or purse and offer this person a penny. Yet here is an insurance-related company that presumably makes more money than you, quibbling over an essentially worthless penny.
The Customer Service Rep apparently was not very nice in explaining the company policy. The supervisor was a little smoother in explaining the company policy. It was only when the patient threatened to go to the media that the company relented. By the time it was resolved, the patient was so mad that she went to the media anyway.
The fallout of this incident made the national media, including MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” and the Huffington Post. Olbermann called the company president “The worst person in the world.”
There is a lesson here for all company leaders. The lack of customer service can give your company a serious black eye! Excellent customer service can resolve differences quickly, efficiently and graciously!
- Do your front line people know that customer satisfaction is VERY important?
- Have they seen you support this value with action?
- Are CSRs rewarded for exceptional customer service?
- Or are they chastised because exceptional customer service may take a little longer and adversely affect Average Call Handling Time?
- Do your front line people have discretion to resolve customer issues (at least up to some limit)?
- Can supervisors override company policy for the good of the customer?
You can see from this incident that it doesn’t take long in this era of instant and widespread communication for one “little” incident to give you and your company a serious beating on national TV and to an international, internet audience. Can you afford this type of publicity?
How would the customer facing people in your company handle this type of situation? Review your policies now! You’ll be glad that you did, ….and so will your customers!
Do the front line people in your company have sufficient empowerment to resolve most customer issues?
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Great idea, thanks for this post!