Give the Client 100% of Your Attention.

How responsive are you to your customers? I ask you this for a specific reason: Ever since my parents passed away, I had been responsible for my foster brother’s well-being. This includes taking care of his life insurance premiums. For years, this had gone smoothly. However, starting in 2022, the company started sending me emails about making the premium payments. When I called to inquire about how much the amount was, I was told that the company couldn’t tell me. I explained that the company emailed me to ask me to make a payment — wouldn’t it make sense that they would want me to know how much the payment is?  Believe it or not, it took three levels of employees before I could get somebody who would cooperate with me and give me the information.

The company also said that if I had my brother sign a permission slip, the company would have no trouble working with me in the future. After two months of waiting, I discovered that the group home where my brother resides never got the permission slip from the insurance company.

When I called the insurance company back to explain what had happened, they said (and I’m not making this stuff up), they couldn’t send my brother’s permission slip for him to sign until he gave them permission to send it to them. Keep in mind that it took me 37 minutes to even get this reply after spending about 30 minutes on hold waiting for somebody to answer the phone.

When I explained that I wanted to speak with someone who was capable of solving a problem, I was told that there was no one there at that level who could help me, but they would have a supervisor call me back. It’s now been over five hours and I still haven’t heard back from anyone there.

By the way, I had agreed to take an automated survey at the end of my phone call. They asked me to rate the service from 1-5. At first, I rated it minus 100 but it didn’t understand my reply. I tried to rate it a zero and again, it didn’t understand my reply so it hung up on me. I guess this is how they keep their ratings high.

I’ve also had a similar problem with my own merchant account vendor. He’s only returned one of my phone calls in the last two years. I contrast that against Chris Judy of Total Merchant Services. Not only is he super-responsive to my phone calls, but he’s always quick to follow up with any leads I give him. And all of my leads for clients in need of a merchant account go to Chris because he demonstrates how much he prizes his customer relationships.

If you don’t focus on your customers, soon you won’t have any customers on whom to focus. Customer service is supposed to be designed to serve customers. If all you’re doing is following policies that your own company set up, you’re doing your employer and your customers a disservice. Remember, there’s a big difference between lip service and legendary customer service.

“Ignore the problem and the customer goes away.” – Dave Romeo

Let me hear from you.

This excerpt is taken from the seminar entitled Communication Excellence I: Connecting With Customers. I encourage you to click here to register for John Ellis’ exclusive live Zoom presentation of Communication Excellence I: Connecting With Customers on Thursday, February 8, 2024 from 9 AM to 12 noon Eastern Standard Time.