Recently, my friend, "Sue", told me about a situation which occurred regarding her Flood Insurance with Auto-Owners (www.auto-owners.com). Sue received the insurance bill and dutifully paid the amount to Auto-Owners prior to the due date, in fact 2 weeks prior to "get it off of her desk", she said.
About a week after payment was made, Sue received a letter in the mail from her mortgage company telling her that they had received a bill from Auto-Owners for that same Flood Insurance she had just paid for in full. The letter went on to say that they (the mortgage company) did not have an escrow in place to pay this amount directly to Auto-Owners and that she needed to contact Auto-Owners or her insurance agent to arrange for payment directly to the insurance company.
Sue contacted her Agent as they suggested and was told to "ignore the letter" from the Mortgage company. The Agent added, "I know it's confusing but Auto-Owners always bills both parties. That's just the way they do business" When Sue said she had already paid Auto-Owners in advance and the check had cleared prior to receiving the letter the Agent said, "Well, everything is automated so it was already scheduled when you had paid. Guess there wasn't a way to stop it from mailing out". Sue suggested that the Agent report to Auto-Owners that this process was a poor one, and the Agent replied, "It won't do any good. It's just the way they do business and they won't change it. I've asked about it before for other Customers and was told that is the way it is done".
When my friend relayed this story to me, I thought it was a perfect example of how to create a poor Customer Experience because your processes aren't focused on making good Customers feel valued, while still operating effectively and efficiently. There were so many lost opportunities.
1. Because of the Auto-Owners double billing method, the mortgage company now has created their own process for sending an auto-generated letter that goes out regarding the bill mistakenly sent to them. How much does this cost the mortgage company? Should the mortgage company be sent a notice of "non-payment" of the Flood Insurance only after the due date has past?
2. The Customer had to take the time (after paying early) to re-check that the payment was cleared, call her Insurance Agent to verify, wait for the Agent to respond and had almost called the Mortgage company as well until the Agent told her it was unnecessary. How much time did this Customer spend trying to take care of what apparently was not a problem at all?
3. Early payment might instead have resulted in a nice email to Customers saying we appreciate your business. Your company can apparently set up confusing letters to auto-generate but can't send out ones to make good Customers feel valued?
4. When Customers are complaining about your processes but you continue to do the same thing, what is your focus: great Customer Service or meeting some internal metric created by the bean counters? Can't you have great Service AND revenue generating/ efficiency processes combined?
Maybe it's time for Auto-Owners to have a Focus Group with Customers to ask them how they feel about this process and others they may have issues with. Or, maybe as Sue's Insurance Agent said, Auto-Owners has been given feedback about it but just choose to go about "business as usual".
