I have to go to the dentist next week and while my Dentist is lovely I really hate having to go. I’m not sure which is worse, the invasion in my mouth or whether the fact she always finds something catastrophically wrong with my teeth (thanks to the idiopathic nature of my disease) or the scary bill at the end of it!!
So that leads me to todays post about calling my Health Insurance. I used to manage a national Contact Centre and my focus was always on ensuring that my teams provided the best customer experience possible. So when I call a contact centre I immediately go into “business mode” and analyse the customer experience. I get really excited when a contact centre consultant exceeds my expectations ( and remember my expectations are high so if they exceed them, it is Gold Stars all round as far as I’m concerned )
Today was not a good day. I rang my Health Insurance and after pushing 1 a couple of times, I was really pleased to be given an option of a call back because there was a 10minute wait. Fantastic…so happy to do that! I entered my phone number for the call-back and recorded my name as requested and hung up. That gave me 10 mins of peace with no “on hold” music and messages and I could happily work away at some admin tasks while waiting for my call back. I was a happy customer 🙂
It was all going so well, 10 minutes after arranging the call back my phone rang, I picked it up, a consultant from my Health Fund answered and I could feel that excitement growing that I was about to have a wonderful customer experience. My broken leg was starting to ache so I knew I needed to get through the call quickly so I could deal with the pain. Well, all my hopes were dashed in one moment. I explained to the consultant what information I needed and he replied ” Oh, I’m sorry my computer isn’t giving me that information today, I’m the only one here that it’s not working for (ha ha) so I’ll have to transfer you to the solutions team”.
“Ok”, I said, thinking it was a simple process of transferring me to another department who would deal with my call straight away, after all it was an arranged call back ! Silly me…15 minutes later of advertising messages I was still on hold and feeling more and more disappointed. What a waste of time to offer a call back and then call me back only to put me on hold again! Who does that??? 😦
20 minutes passed and finally my call was answered. I have to say the consultant I spoke to was really nice and did answer my query quickly, although his product knowledge has left me wondering if I do actually have the right information. Oh well, there is no way I am calling back today. It’s moments like these that I really miss my old job where I could at least do something to initiate change and create a positive contact centre culture for customers and staff. Thankfully though this was just one experience and many of my old colleagues in the contact centre business, across various industries, are working incredibly hard each and every day to make a difference!
“I feel better now!”
My Medical Musings 