Over the last month and a half, I had quite the customer service experience with my car insurance broker and car insurance provider. All to get an answer to two questions on the renewal of my car insurance policy. Two questions...sound simple?
As you can tell from the duration of the back and forth, turned out to be far from straightforward. So many things went awry there are several blog posts I could write, and, today I’m going to focus on how their customer service did at answering my questions.
What abilities were the customer service representatives and customer supervisor lacking that resulted in their own manager being shocked once the escalation reached her? Would customer service for the product / service you’re responsible for do any better?
The Customer Experience:
In April I received a revised car insurance policy to account for the mileage on my vehicle over the last year
The document showed the low mileage discount being applied to each line item of the car insurance premium
However when all the line items in the premium column were added up, with all the low mileage discount line items, the sum was different than the premium total shown on the document
And in the Merit Rating Row, which is for adjustments based on my driving record, it appeared I was being charged an amount, even though there was no change to my driving record over the last year
I called to ask:
What is the charge in the Merit Rating Row for?
How come the Total Premium on the document is a different number than what the line items add up to?
It took 10 phone calls and three escalations over 1.5 months to get clear answers to the above questions
Clearly not these companies finest moments
What Abilities were the Customer Service Personnel and Customer Service Supervisors Lacking?
The biggest thing I encountered was an inability to listen to the customer
Neither the representatives at the car insurance provider, or either company’s Customer Service Supervisor could listen to what I was saying
They kept responding with something other than what I had asked
The next biggest thing encountered was an inability to answer the question from the customer’s perspective, and in a way that makes sense to the customer
Neither the representatives or the Customer Service Supervisor at the car insurance provider, the company that issued the policy, could even answer the questions
The Customer Service Supervisor at the car insurance broker completely lost me as she was unable to succinctly answer the questions in language I could understand
She kept using a bunch of insurance lingo I’m unfamiliar with, and kept coming at the math a completely different way than how I was looking at it
Also experienced was a lack of follow through
The Customer Service Supervisor at the car insurance provider, instead of calling me which is what had been promised by their direct report, called a representative at the car insurance broker who left me a message that caused quite a bit of confusion
Another customer service representative at the insurance broker, most times followed through on what he said he would do, yet twice I never received the follow up phone calls he told me I would receive
Lastly one customer service representative at the insurance broker lacked critical thinking skills
She called and left a message saying the Merit Rating Row charge was the cost of my policy
This made zero sense as I’ve been a customer for a long time and there is no such thing
When the Customer Service Manager at the Insurance Broker called, my final escalation, she was:
Able to listen, in under 10 minutes answered the questions from my perspective and in a way I could understand, and followed through on what she said she would do
Shocked all the people before her were unable to clearly and succinctly answer my two questions, and at the customer experience I had
Reflecting on the above, and thinking about your own customer support team:
How many phone calls / emails / chat reach-outs, on average, is it taking a customer to get an answer to their question?
How well does your customer support personnel listen to customers?
How often is the customer support team answering the question from the customer’s perspective and using language the customer can understand?
How often is your customer support team following through on what they tell customers they will do?
Call to Action
Unsure the answers to the above questions or unhappy with the answers, and want help assessing and/or improving the listening skills of your customer support team? Reach out to Rosanne for help so you can improve the customer support experience for the product or service you’re responsible for.
Using the comments feature, what’s a customer support experience you’ve had where it took more effort to get your question answered than seemed reasonable?
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About the Author: Rosanne Essiambre helps change agents and departments in one-on-one and group settings to be seen, be heard, and be effective in bringing about change in the organization and/or in their personal lives. She provides consulting and facilitation to organizations to improve communications and collaboration, smooth out the change / transformation journey, get to the root cause of an issue so it can be solved for good, improve processes, and implement successful lessons learned. And she conducts workshops, trains, and speaks on Energy Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, Resilience, Being a Change Agent and more. If you or your organization could use support with your change effort or some inspiration, contact Rosanne for a complimentary discovery session. Rosanne is a Change Agent Coach, Facilitator, Six Sigma Black Belt, Change Management / Continuous Improvement Consultant, Speaker, and Energy Leadership Index Master Practitioner with more than 20 years experience working on a variety of transformations across a diverse set of industries both domestically and internationally, while continuously improving herself.