Do Your Clients Love You Or Hate You?

Here’s How Blue Cross Blue Shield Got Me to Leave Them…

Put your clients on hold for 4.5 hours, with a deadline so that they can’t hang up. Don’t provide any sort of automated system to schedule a call back. And make sure there is no other way to get what you need without a call. I just did that this morning. But let me back up…

In December I received a friendly letter from my Health Insurance Provider – BCBS of North Carolina… letting me know that my policy would no longer be offered in the county I live it. That was puzzling to me, but it is what it is.

I then received another letter telling me my premium would be double with the new plan they were putting me on – all part of the “Affordable” Healthcare Act.

So this morning I was forced to hang on the phone listening to their music and a hold message telling me they were to busy to talk to me…knowing that in just a few days my bank account would be syphoned off to a new plan that I did not order.

Over the course of 4.5 hours I did have a few contacts with different people. People who could not help me, but who would be happy to transfer me to another hour-long queue. The first person I spoke with actually told me I was not in the system and no longer had any plan, and not to worry about the automatic bank draft. The second person said, “That’s not right, but I can’t help you…hold please.”

Finally I reached the right person…who told me that actually I did have a plan, and that my annual rate would be grandfathered in at a similar rate to the old one…in other words, the letters I had received, and all the research I did in December to find a new plan, could have been avoided. But of course, I had done all of that with the information I had, and was ready to quick BCBS…After a 4.5 hour wait, it’s hard to feel good about staying.

What a disaster…Are there other industries out there that can operate like this and still be in business? If there are, yours in not one of them…what are you doing to make sure people on are getting their answers quickly?