Customer Service needs care as well as efficiency
Regular readers to this blog may remember I posted an entry about my pet insurer, Pet Plan, back in the summer. I was disappointed that, despite my years of customer loyalty, Pet Plan still wrote to me as if I was a stranger. With no reference or recognition of my cats’ history, Pet Plan talked only to me about the cost of the premiums, so focusing my attention on price alone.
Last month, one of my cats suffered kidney failure, and after a week of caring but ineffective hospitalisation, she passed away. The veterinary practice was excellent - totally professional, a combination of understanding and efficiency in all the right places. It was clear they were well practiced in this difficult final journey between pets and owners, and their expertise in handling it showed.
To my surprise, Pet Plan was pretty good too. They processed the insurance claim quickly and efficiently. They wrote a sympathetic letter, mentioning my cat by name, and of course adjusting the policy to reflect only one cat to be insured going forward.
It was obvious that the insurer recognised the importance of the death of a pet - not just financially to their records, but emotionally to the owner - that much was apparent from the tone of the communication rather than the content it conveyed. I can’t pretend that the letter was genuinely personalised, but at least somewhere in the automated policy change, someone had thought about an appropriate way of writing.
It has softened my view of Pet Plan as a result, but I wish it hadn’t taken a fatality to be acknowledged as an individual. That’s the trouble with a brand that only makes the effort when they have to - it serves to highlight all the other occasions when they don’t.
2 years ago