My Hand Surgeon Just Helped Clear Up My Vision

Was just on the phone with my hand surgeon’s office mak­ing an appoint­ment. Turns out, I need x-rays before the appoint­ment. The recep­tion­ist says “would you like to hold so I can call and make the appoint­ment with the x-ray lab for you?”

She must have taken my stunned silence for yes, because she effi­ciently left and returned con­firm­ing my appoint­ment and answer­ing my ques­tion before I could even ver­bal­ize it (Yes, I do need to wait for the film to be devel­oped and then bring them and my hands to the office).

How’s that for ser­vice? Sur­prised. Maybe you wouldn’t be if I told you that this doc­tor is not in my insur­ance plan.

That explains it. See, I orig­i­nally chose her for her rep­u­ta­tion. I’ve had a 12 year rela­tion­ship with her since then. Com­bine that inher­ent value with the level of ser­vice demon­strated by today’s con­ver­sa­tion, and I’m for­tu­nate that I’m a sin­gle white-collar worker who can “splurge” on health-care to treat what I fear is a debil­i­tat­ing degen­er­a­tive dis­ease (arthritis).

How’s an insur­ance com­pany sup­posed to value these softer bits, like rep­u­ta­tion, rela­tion­ship, or ser­vice? They can’t. Or, they choose not to. They charge a flat rate for both the doc­tor fresh out of school with no sur­gi­cal expe­ri­ence and Dr. Susan Scott, the for­mer 8-year team doc­tor for the New York Lib­erty.

Doesn’t make sense, does it?

How about this one… I noticed a con­ver­sa­tion on twit­ter about a prob­lem Christina was hav­ing with Com­cast. Due to “sys­tem lim­i­ta­tions” she’s had to pay a $495 bill twice to keep her account from being closed (funny tweets — read this, then this, then this, but notice the tone shortly after here and here). Like my arthri­tis that can’t be ignored, phone/internet access is a require­ment in our cul­ture (she and the per­son she lives with both work at home, so it’s crit­i­cal they get online). Yet Com­cast is telling Christina that their account prob­lem is really her prob­lem and until they work it out, she has to pony up the cash or be left in the dark.

Crazy right? Well, all too com­mon. But, what I find more interesting…

@ComcastCares got on it, reas­sured her by lis­ten­ing, and I sus­pect solved the prob­lem rather quickly.

I had a sim­i­lar issue with Wells Fargo a month or so ago. Called cus­tomer ser­vice and the per­son was an Idiot. (Yes, that is “Capital-I idiot” on pur­pose.) @Ask_WellsFargo lis­tened to my (rather log­i­cal) expla­na­tion of what was going on, and it was more-or-less fixed rather quickly and with a whole lot less frus­tra­tion on my part.

Why is that? Why can things be fixed on twit­ter when they can’t be fixed in multi-million-dollar call centers?

Now this is important…

I believe it’s because the peo­ple between cus­tomer ser­vice reps and the cus­tomer, you know… those peo­ple who are sup­posed to make things more effi­cient and con­sis­tent, they haven’t yet tried to “fix” cus­tomer sup­port on twit­ter and what you’re actu­ally see­ing is raw, and beau­ti­ful, prob­lem solv­ing. Twit­ter, for the time being, cuts across all the crap to sim­ply con­nect two peo­ple who want to get things done, and let’s them use their own com­mon sense to fig­ure it out.

And, the action item?

Well, sim­ple. Give peo­ple guide­lines and an esca­la­tion path in case the guide­lines can’t be fol­lowed, and your staff will astound you with results. Give them “deci­sion trees” to fol­low and they’ll respond by dumb­ing them­selves down to match the deci­sion tree, for­get­ting the objec­tive is not to fol­low a deci­sion path, but to make cus­tomers happy.

This may seem less effi­cient, but it starts to con­sider some of the softer val­ues that are not eas­ily quan­tifi­able. And in the end, I believe it’ll make a world of difference.

PS @ComcastCares seems to be one smart guy, but @WellsFargo has a team, and they change their photo at the begin­ning of their shift, so you’re tweet­ing with a per­son. Very nice touch.

Update: May 20th. Just came back from my “insur­ance plan reg­u­lar doc­tor” (checkup, noth­ing major thank you for your con­cern) and the recep­tion­ist made me sign a waiver that said the doc­tors office couldn’t keep up with my plan details, and if they did some­thing that wasn’t on the plan (or needed a refer­ral, etc) it was my respon­si­bil­ity. Fas­ci­nat­ing. The doc­tor that doesn’t take insur­ance can keep up with the details as a way of pro­vid­ing a higher level of ser­vice, but teh doc­tor that is in the plan cannot.