My text to an agency after my interaction with ExpressScripts after editing out the negative feedback:
Yup. Nothing left. Five customer service reps, three-four transfers, two dropped calls, 47 minutes and 20 seconds of pure torture. 800 milligrams of ibuprofen. All to place a request for a bill/invoice I’d paid nine weeks ago and never received any acknowledgement thereof. I fully acknowledge my place as a mere freckle on the a&$ of giant healthcare companies such as the quadruple merged ExpressScripts; I realize power to enact anything even through my primary healthcare carrier is even list. I struggle, how-ever, to accept the apathetic and/or incompetent service we should receive as end-users of the service.
I’ve been on all sides of the client spectrum; face-to-face, behind a screen, a voice on a phone, an old-fashioned paper letter, an e-mail. Selling, servicing, buying. All of it. Perhaps my most recent experience as a micro-business has overcharged my expectations of how clients deserve to be treated? Maybe the early years of relentless training and reminders from a former employer on the high value (expectation) of providing a positive customer experience has done the same.
In our overcharged, over capitalized economy consisting of the constant and consistent push to raise shareholder value it is a provable (sp?) fact that training and education are some of the first things to become squeezed out of public corporations. It’s probably also provable a positive client experience is not factored into the ongoing M&A activity.
We had the discussion a few nights ago—neither of us could remember the last time either of us was sick. I do nothing magical and I’m sure the sick-gene is somewhere within our families. Fortunate as we are for inexplicably good overall health; it’s a foregone conclusion things will continue to deteriorate with age. Faced with the prospect of more client service interactions I can feel my heart-rate creep up. I long for the days Dr. Brown’s wife (Mildred) would give us cocoa and cookies after our Dr’s visit and if we were really good she’d walk us to their second home which had been converted to her art gallery for a look around at her latest project. Surely that’s the pinnacle of client service. How far we’ve fallen.