Dear Ed Rust, Jr., Chairman and CEO of State Farm Mutual, and Jennifer Hiteshue, Medina State Farm insurance agent:
Within any industry, the one element key to ensuring a long and happy run for your business is recognizing your clients' expectations and successfully meeting them, nay anticipating them so that you're able to provide an appropriately priced service or product at the very moment it becomes needed. Especially in this economy. Accordingly, not meeting your clients' expectations, repeatedly, is one way to ensure the eventual demise of your company, even one that has been in business for 89 years. In an effort to help you recognize just how poorly you responded to this formerly loyal customer's expectations and needs, please read on. And for anybody considering buying insurance (in any form) from Jennifer Hiteshue's Medina State Farm office, do so only if you're willing to keep an exceptionally close eye on how she (or rather her staff) handles your insurance needs.
Expectation #1: Keeping Your Word
Integrity, honesty, dependability. All are commendable qualities in a business which become poignantly necessary when dealing with something as ignoble yet critically necessary as insurance. As an insured customer, this expectation is quite simple. In short, do what you say you're going to do. Be it adding on supplemental coverage to a homeowner's policy in a timely manner (as in when you say you will and not three months later when your lapse makes itself known in the annual renewal notice to your customer) or canceling a customer's policies on the date you say you will and not a month afterward when said customer receives notice in the mail of a canceled policy due to nonpayment of premium. When you fail to keep your word, all pomp and circumstance surrounding your company's good name falls away and leaves your customers with the lasting impression of incompetence. Not a good attribute for any company looking to stay in business, but especially one which is in place to protect its clients' most beloved things against unforeseeable circumstances.
Expectation #2: Charging a Fair Rate (And Keeping it that Way)
Insurance companies long since have had a reputation for fleecing their customers. Look at any insurance company's commercials, and you'll easily recognize their attempt to overcome this expectation. Again and again, we consumers hear about the superior service, exceptional claims department, fair value, and friendliness of X, Y, or Z insurance company. Why? Because they know we know we're essentially pouring funds into their companies and making an investment that will, God willing, likely never give us a return. Customer purchases are no doubt motivated by the quality of coverage, but overall, customers want the best coverage they can get for the least amount of money possible.
So when you reign in a customer by offering them exceptional rates and then slowly jack up their rates by 60% over the course of five years, it's advisable to have a better explanation for doing so than simply saying "it's nothing to do with what you're doing. It's just the economy and rising market prices." Moreover, if this pitiful excuse for raising your clients' premiums, even when they have never made a claim in the fifteen years they've been insured with your company, have the gall to stand behind it. Because when your clients suddenly receive a renewal notice with rates that are $200 cheaper than they expected that is not accompanied by an explanation for the sudden drastic drop in their rates, it magnifies just how sleazy your company is. In effect, it says to said client that you were hoping they wouldn't notice the incredible increase in premiums but now that they have, you'll go back to giving them a fair rate. It tells the client they have to keep a pretty close eye on what their insurance agent is doing in order to ensure they continue to get a fair rate for their coverage. And what your clients need less of is the hassle of watching over a company which is part of an already highly mistrusted industry. And nothing will send your customers packing quicker than ensuring them they can't trust you.
Expectation #3: Treating Clients with the Respect and Courtesy They Deserve
Nobody likes to feel like they're not important, especially when they're dealing with an inconvenient or unpleasant situation. Most especially when the person treating them so poorly is actually the one who caused the problem in the first place. Accordingly, when dealing with an upset client, it's in your best interest to take a moment and, you know, actually call them back instead of handing them and their problems off to your lackeys. Certainly, staff and assistants are hired to ease your work load, but when a client calls repeatedly, specifically asks to speak with you and is clearly becoming increasingly agitated by the incompetence of your staff, it might be a good idea to take matters into your own hands. To do some damage control, as it were. Continuously brushing off upset customers tells them (1) they're time is less important than yours and (2) you don't care whether their situation is resolved or what problems they may be facing in dealing with your staff members. Staff members, I might add, who don't bother hiding their irritation with upset clients.
Maybe this expectation seems silly. Certainly, an out-going customer must know they won't hold the same priority for the high-ranking insurance agent whose name graces the front of the building. Maybe it seems outlandish for them to expect that agent to give them a minute of their time so problems can be resolved without the constant back and forth that typically goes on with underlings. But when a client has been a loyal customer of your company for fifteen years, six of those spent under your care, and has effectively poured $7,500 in your company and never asked for anything in return, maybe a little courtesy is called for. If not from you, then certainly from your staff members. Especially when the mistake that has put this client out originated from the oversight of one of your staff members.
Which leads us to our last expectation...
Expectation #4: Admitting Fault and Apologizing
I know your little cards tell your clients never to admit fault when involved in an accident, even when it's blatantly obvious who was at fault, and maybe you've decided to assume the same philosophy when it comes to handling your clients' insurance. Let me assure you, this approach does little to earn your customers' confidence, and when you've made mistake after mistake without ever owning up or apologizing, it's much easier for clients to walk away. After all, State Farm is not the only insurance agency in the sea. For that matter, Jennifer Hiteshue isn't the only State Farm agent in the small town of Medina.
So when you or somebody on your staff has executed a major foul-up -- one that delays their refund, one that causes their escrow account to be double-charged thus raising their monthly escrow payments and requiring them to enter into a month-long process to set things right with their bank, one that takes nearly a week and four nasty calls to resolve -- it might be time to put on a brave smile and simply say, "Sorry for the inconvenience of our mistake." Or maybe just a meekly mumbled, "sorry." Something that indicates you not only acknowledge that you've made a mistake, but that you regret causing your clients such an inconvenience. That you regret shattering whatever confidence and trust your client had in you.
Of course, that is, unless you aren't sorry at all. Which, based on how you've conducted your affairs these past few months, seems a much more likely possibility.
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