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| Vice President—Content/Editorial Director, Ruthanne Terrero |
Luckily, we personally didn’t have too many issues during the recent storms on the East Coast, but we figured it didn’t hurt to look at our homeowners policy. It turns out the insurance carrier that we’ve used for more than 25 years had somewhere along the way reduced various elements of our coverage, yet was still charging us the same amount of money. Infuriated, we of course immediately thought about switching to Geico (Hey, those commercials with that little lizard really make an imprint on your brain after you’ve seen them 500 times) or Progressive (their TV commercials aren’t too bad, either). But we gave a call to our existing broker to see what the heck was going on. Turns out, the guy who answered the phone was perfectly amenable and clearly wanted to keep us as customers. He easily upgraded our policy with all sorts of add-ons that gave us even more coverage than we’d had originally, all for the same price. It turned out well, but wouldn’t it have been less harrowing if he’d been proactively servicing our account, maintaining a relationship with us over the years so we’d never even considered leaving him for those companies that heavily advertise?
Same week. We called our bank representative to ask a question about our account. We’ve always liked him and always felt good when we stopped by to see him. But when we called him this time, we were told he didn’t work there anymore. It was a short call. No one asked why we were calling him. That felt pretty bad. We started talking about switching banks but we decided to go over to our branch to find out what had happened to him. When we got there, we were told to sit down and wait awhile. This was not making things better. Eventually a very vibrant, efficient woman came out and introduced herself to us. She was wonderful. She was very excited to be working at this office and told us that our old guy had gotten a new job at a different bank. So he wasn’t in jail or anything for stealing money. That was good. We left, very happy, but again I thought, would it have been possible for us to receive a call when our banker left? Must we be left to discover such things on our own?
As we were preparing the cover story for this issue on customer service, I realized, that’s what my week was all about. Both situations had been about negligent customer service. We didn’t ask for anything from the suppliers we were dealing with and in return, they did nothing.
During our roundtable discussion, which appears at www.travelagentcentral.com/conferences/delivering-excellent-customer-service, we spoke about staying in touch with clients. As June Sloane of Protravel so aptly put it, “We’re not bartenders, we don’t want to get too close. But we want to stay in touch with our clients.” I wish my insurance broker and my bank felt the same way about me.
You’ll learn a lot from our exciting roundtable discussion on customer service but if you can take away anything from the week that I just endured, you’ll learn to communicate with your clients when something major impacts their relationship with you. Maybe their advisor has left the agency or perhaps there’s a price increase in the dream trip they haven’t yet booked. Don’t be afraid to contact them. Seize the opportunity to reach out and touch them. They’ll appreciate that you did.