BACK TO THE FLOOR?

Insurance industry customer service is getting better, but

Such incidents cause every member of the CM, plus all those who strive to uphold the industry image, to shudder with total disbelief, then despair, even anger. This is, after all, our industry we are talking about.

The case cited by Nigel Richardson this month (page 10) is an example where no valid reason for an insurer to cancel a motor policy mid-term following a simple change of address could be given. There must have been a reason, but in this case it was obviously a closely guarded secret, and not one to be entrusted to a call centre operator to explain to an exasperated client.

It's clear some executive boards have little idea how their lack of management of their employees working in the trenches on the customer front brings them into total ridicule.

Unfortunately there are plenty other examples of this kind of remote management control. 'Direct to the insurer' claims handling can reach farcical heights when rigid rules insist the insurer's operator must only talk with the claimant in person, and not their broker or personal representative. Accent and language difficulties produce some quite incomprehensible, and consequently lengthy conversations.

A recently reported example involved the tragi-comedy of a son helping his elderly mother to make a household flood claim. He explained that her deafness would require him to relay the operator's questions to her, but this simple solution was apparently outside the parameters laid down for this particular operator. The consequence was one of the most bizarre telephone conversations ever to appear outside a zany TV comedy sketch.

But then it's not the operators who are to blame. It's the scriptwriters above in the ivory towers. Time perhaps for some management teams to roll up their sleeves and spend some time on the shop floor?