Michael MaozI am betting that I have had more poor customer service interactions this week than in the past six months, and several of them had to do with the use of, or overlooking of, proactive customer service alerts and tools. You’d think that with the economies around the globe falling to one knee, that now would be a good time for all of us to buckle down and get our processes right.
Yes, I love technology. I especially appreciate how it has the power to make a bad process that much worse, that much faster. Technology advances have also made all of us a bit less patient. We know what it can do if deployed correctly, and it hurts more when it doesn’t. I could write a short expose about my healthcare and the petty and not-so-petty glitches that have caused my family (and the provider) so much wasted time.
The latest episode in broken process? My oldest daughter went back to Graduate school, and is once again eligible for health coverage on the family plan. I went online, and I completed the sign up forms. Step one, complete. Then we faxed her school forms with acceptance letters and proof of student status to our healthcare provider. Step two, complete. Then we called to verify everything was in order. Step three, complete. Next, we received her eligibility letter in the mail from the healthcare provider, and her insurance card. Name, ID, #, Plan, Date: check/check/check/check. But then the night grew dark, and the rain came down. My daughter went to an “approved” physician and paid the co-pay. Next we receive a letter from the insurer that said daughter has no coverage. And the phone calls begin. The very polite customer service agent explains that we never signed up for coverage for my daughter. Groan, slightly audible. “Could you check?” I have checked, sir. (Another groan, less slightly audible.) “Perhaps you could check another department?” Well, the actual department where that would be checked is closed, because, though Customer Service is open on the phone, Benefits is not. But the polite woman checks our family coverage plan, and she finds that everything is in order, my daughter is eligible, but the message never got to the folks who approve benefit payments.
Long winded story? A bit. But the point is that workflow processes are critical, as are proactive messages. In this case the service process was excellent, but the customer experience terrible, and the cost high. New invoices must be sent out, systems update, 20 minutes of talk time must be paid for, and the system is still broken. Great software could help, but it can’t help bad process. IT did its job fine, but so what?
Try modeling process from the customer’s experience: the results might surprise you, and you’d spend less of your time in the “Cloud” and your view of Customer Service might reach to the heights of your love of Web Services, your SOA would meet the “So What” test of business impact.
But you already know that. We talk the talk, but we hobble the walk. Because the ‘walk’ is out in the line of business, not in IT.
Comments Off
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
