Thinking through the customer contact process

Without going into all of the particulars, or naming names, I’ve been having a minor back-and-forth and with my health insurance provider.

Now, I first have to say that, overall, the service from this insurance provider has been excellent. They pay our doctors’ and hospital bills promptly, don’t seem to reject things willy-nilly, provide very clear information (for the most part), and employ customer service reps who are pleasant, knowledgeable, helpful, and courteous.

Which is what I would expect, given that my husband and I pay about $14K worth of premiums each year.

And it’s not as if we’re making over claims on our service, either.

With the exception of last year, when my husband had surgery for prostate cancer, and this year,with my broken arm and prolonged physical therapy saga, we don’t tend to put in a lot of health insurance claims. (Knock on wood.) We pretty much have our regular physicals, whatever tests they entail (which at our ages means an occasional colonoscopy, I’m afraid), flu shot, and a stray visit or two to the hospital walk in clinic. (A few weekends ago, I diagnosed myself with strep throat and wasn’t willing to wait an extra day to see my regular doctor.)

But, as I’ve mentioned, I’m now in a bit of a call and response regarding an issue around my broken arm.

Here’s the shape it’s taken:

• I received a letter, inquiring whether I was taking any legal action against the hotel where I fell and broke my arm. Yes, I tripped on their damned rug. But, no, I wasn’t going to sue. If I was going to sue, they wanted their piece of the action. Fair enough.
• As requested, I called the insurance carrier, gave some further details about the accident, and told them I had taken no action, nor was I intending to.
• A few weeks later, I received yet another letter, accompanied by a mailback envelope, that stated that, since I was making a legal claim against a third party, they were making a formal claim on their part of the settlement. Fair enough - sort of, given that their claim could, in fact, entitle them to whatever they’d paid out, even if the amount of my mythical settlement wasn’t sufficient to cover both their costs and my lawyer’s fees. (If I had been considering a suit, this would certainly have given me pause.) In any case, this letter asked me to contact them "prior to concluding any settlement."
• So, I called and spoke to a perfectly nice person and told her that they had erroneous information, and that I was not seeking any settlement. The perfectly nice person told me that I had to send the letter they’d sent me back to them, with a note written on it stating that this was the case. Sending the letter back was apparently what the enclosed envelope was for. Who knew?

As I’ve mentioned, everyone I’ve dealt with has been perfectly nice - or at least imperfectly nice, but this inquiring mind wants to know why:

• If they wanted me to send the letter back, why didn’t they say so in the letter. And why didn’t they have a comment space on it. (There was plenty of room.) As it was, I just scrawled a note across the bottom.)
• Why wasn’t it sufficient for me to make my case with the phone call? But, no, I had to send the form back.

This is, of course, a trivial matter (at least I think and hope it is), but it’s exemplary of a clumsy customer contact process that isn’t very well thought through. The inclusion of one simple sentence on the letter would have cleared things up completely, and saved me the trouble of a phone call. Not to mention having to address an envelope, given that I’d already recycled the envelope they sent along with their letter (since I had no clue what I was supposed to do with it).

Please, customer contact folks, walk and think through your processes. There may be some stray odd-ball glitches that could be easily remedied.

Grrrrrrrrr.

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