It was so blowy at my home yesterday.
It was that windy, it would blow a dog off a chain.
Already in the previous eight days we’d had significant damage to three beautiful trees in our garden.
And yesterday morning a fourth tree decided to drop a big part of itself onto the side of our house.
Fortunately, the tree seems to have only damaged the roof, and a gutter. It also landed on the bonnet of Jayne’s car.
I phoned my builder who had built our renovations last year, and he was around in 30 minutes to help pull the tree off the side of the house and also get the car from under the branches.
He said to contact the insurer about getting the OK for him to do the repairs.
He said that if you rely on the insurer, you’ll get any old Joe with a hammer and a nail gun coming out…. And that won’t be good.
And he’s correct.
Years ago up in Sydney, we had a faulty dishwasher leak across our timber kitchen floor. The floorboards cupped from the moisture they absorbed….and so they needed sanding and repolishing. Our family had to move out of the house for a week while the floors were fixed… All covered by insurance.
Then guess what happened? … the floorboards hadn’t dried out completely and they cupped again.
So we re-contacted the insurer, who agreed that the boards needed to be re-sanded and repolished.
But this time, we asked the insurer if we could choose the company to repair the floorboards.
The reason we did this was we wanted someone we knew who did good work to repair the boards properly. Obviously the first repairer had not given us the best course of action [for us]. And because we had friends who built luxury homes who had a very reputable floor guy doing their timber floors, we wanted to use him this time.
So I contacted the insurer about the tree damage today…
I phoned the local office of the national insurance company.
They told me they only do sales from that office…. And that I needed to contact the national phone number for any claims.
So I phoned that number and was told by a recorded message that the claim could be made online.
Which I did.
Once I completed my claim application online, I asked the chat [by typing], if I was able to choose my own repairer once my damage had been assessed?
That’s when the fun started…
So I ended up chat typing with four different people …
The first chat person [Marie] told me that my claim fell outside her area of expertise and referred our chat to a second chat person [Javan].
Sadly, Javan was in the car insurance sector. He couldn’t help me.
He transferred me to Pat [chat person number three], who then quickly transferred me to Allen [chat person
Allen began by asking me for information that I had already provided.
All I wanted Allen to tell me was whether or not I could use my own repairer, and I also wanted to know whether I could get the tree that fell on the house chopped up sooner rather than later, because I had other people coming to do other work on the property this week, and the tree would be in their way.
All Allen kept typing to me was that the assessor would handle everything once they had come out in five days’ time [the assessor had already contacted me].
Finally, after asking him whether it was possible, Allen typed that I could submit photos via email to get earlier approval for the tree removal … but I couldn’t understand why he didn’t offer this information firstly considering that I had been asking the question with some urgency.
This was a simple claim…
I’m not sure why this was so complicated for my insurer?
This was a simple claim.
And the online back and forwards took nearly three hours and there was still no clarity after the chat ended.
Imagine if this was a dental chat…
In this morning’s adventure, I can see the tree. I can see my car. I can see my house.
I know what has happened and I know what is needed.
It’s not rocket science.
But inside a mouth, if someone has a problem, they 99.9% of the time want to talk to a human being from the dental practice, who has dental experience, dental knowledge, and empathy…
They don’t want to be passed from one invisible chat typing person to another, having to repeat themselves over and over via text message, and end up feeling that they just wanted someone to listen to them, to hear them, and to help them.
I didn’t get any feeling of assistance from my house insurer.
Moreover, all I ended up feeling was resistance rather than assistance…
And I know that callers to dental practices would rather talk to someone who knows what they [the caller] is needing and wanting… rather than talking to someone following a flow chart sequence.
Do you think that a call centre offsite or offshore is the answer for dentistry?
It might be an answer… but it might be a poor answer.
And unless its manned with people who really know and care, that call centre won’t cut the mustard with the people who matter…
And the people who matter are those that need help asap, and now… and not five days later….
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Dr. David Moffet BDS FPFA CSP is a certified CX Experience coach. David works with his wife Jayne Bandy to help SME businesses improve their Customer Service Systems to create memorable World Class experiences for their valued clients and customers. Click here to find out how David and Jayne can help your business