Is the Quality of CSR's Rapidly Declining?

[BlockO]

90-95% of the time, when I have to call a CSR, I've never had a problem. For the most part, they're smart, helpful and friendly. But here lately, I've had to deal with some stupid ass people!

A customer called me today after getting her renewal paperwork in the mail.....

She called to tell me that the company also by accident, mailed someone else's policy info into the same envelope as her policy info came in (a stranger from 200+ miles away). She game me the customer's name and policy #, and I agreed to pass it along....

This insured is not on my books, so I call the company to let them know a simple mistake was made.....

answer I expected to hear: "ok, no problem. I'll re-mail recent documents we've sent to that customer, and make a note on his account."

answer I got: "tell your customer to mail that part back to us and then we'll send it back out".

Long story short: I at least convinced her to make a note on this person's policy. And like I said before, my experience with CSR's has been very positive.

But here lately: I've noticed a higher concentration of the asshats and the stupid!

You can get around asshats by simply calling right back and speaking to a different rep. But you can't fix stupid! (sorry for the plagiarism Mr. White)

Perhaps this is why the majority of people would rather go through an agent?

 

[VolAgent]

The root of the problem is management.

Always has been, always will be.

Management hires, management trains, and management fires. That is why they get the big bucks. Unfortunately they have had some success of late in forgoing the training portion. It is starting to come back and bite them in the rear.

 

[AZDave]

I agree that is it management, too. Your account is just one of many they hear all the time, and nothing gets done. I have been referred to many layers of 'policy services', and often hear, 'we don't know how that happened', or 'that didn't happen''. I have this vision of the mail room, with piles of policies sorting one direction or the other, mostly done right, but some done wrong, and old clunky machines clanking and banging...

Last month I had one of my commercial policy's mailed to the wrong agent by the carrier to another independent, rather large indy at that. This policy was for gl, property, work comp and commercial auto, and premium around $50k. What will this other agent do with all this proprietary info? Hopefully nothing and they did mail it to me. Owe them and paid them for the postage. The carrier had no clue how this happened. They did not fess up, couldn't happen...I had to mail them the postage paid envelope from the other agent and they probably threw that away...

Companies need to get rid of their old processing systems and invest in the newest, easiest, fastest policy delivery systems. I have my favorite carriers, and cringe to use the stuck in the old way carriers...but sometimes have too.

Good Selling,
Dave

 

[Aram Fingal]

Believe it or not, a lot of these things get processed manually off shore because it's cheaper than maintaining machines... Then they just bulk ship it to the US and take it all the the post office.

I figured out through some investigation that one of the major carriers even gathers up all the payments mailed to them and sends them off shore to be opened and processed. I figured this out after some of the payments being sent to them for processing were being screwed up in the most unbelievable ways. For instance, on a package policy they were applying the entire payment to the auto portion, none of it to the home, and then refunding the over payment and sending a notice of cancellation on the home. This kind of thing happened several times before I got them to tell me that they don't actually process the payments at the payment receiving location. They wouldn't tell me where they went from there, but it's pretty easy to figure it out.

 

[TeePee]

I have had 5 newbies in my office in the past 14 months. The problem I have with 90% of their work is that NO ONE wants to deal with anyone but me...... One former CSR told me when she quit was that I hand feed my customers too much. Very true but that is how I have kept my retention up. A double edge sword.

 

[Aram Fingal]

I have had 5 newbies in my office in the past 14 months. The problem I have with 90% of their work is that NO ONE wants to deal with anyone but me...... One former CSR told me when she quit was that I hand feed my customers too much. Very true but that is how I have kept my retention up. A double edge sword.

One way to handle this would be for you to take the initial call from the client, make note of what they need, and let them know it will be taken care of and that your CSR will follow up to let them know it's done. Then hand it off and let the CSR take care of it and do the follow up. This way your clients will feel like you're still working with them, but they'll get used to working with your CSR too. Eventually they'll get comfortable with dealing with your CSR for routine stuff like payments and insurance cards etc.

 

[USF3983]

I think people are mistaking the CSRs that work in the call centers vs the ones that work at agencies.

I can't say I have experienced any changes but I try not to rely on what they tell me. I try to remember past experiences of what I was able to get by them. These CSRs usually represent regions or the whole US I think. I tend to know their rules for my state. I called Progressive once to verify that they stopped short-rating cancellations during the first policy period with the carrier. The guy told me there was still a cancellation fee. A flat fee of $50 which I have never heard of in my 7 years selling insurance. It was always short-rate or no cancel fee. I told him I was in Florida just in case he was mistaken. He proceeded to tell me he was from Jacksonville. I said, "Ok, thanks, bye." He wasted enough of my time. I already knew the answer, just wanted to double-check.

 

[CustSvcAdvocate]

I actually had a positive experience with an Insurance Co.

So, in May of this year, my car was deemed totaled by North American Risk Services (NARS), through no fault of my own. I had heard so many stories from friends, family & bloggers about how a 'Total Car Loss' situation would be met with Insurance reps that would be rude, dismissive, argumentative, low-balling and lacking in follow-up. So, already stressed out because of the accident, I braced myself.

Once contact was made with Ms. Miller, my Claims Adjuster, I found her to be professional, polite, accommodating and very responsive to my calls or emails. Given the 3 hour time difference, if I left a msg the night before, by the time I got up for work the next morning, her response would be in my In-Box or on my voice-mail. No matter how insignificant my question was, there was a quick response. I never felt belittled or maligned, even if I disagreed with a decision.

My Salvage Technician, Janet, was also amazing. She sent me docs that were pre-printed & instructions to assist me with attaining a Salvage Title, which I had no clue about since I never had a car totaled before. Again, my numerous questions via email were treated with respect and a kind of attitude of making me feel that she really wanted to assist me with this process.

Overall, the NARS process was impressive, efficient and completely unlike what I heard it would be given other people's experiences with Insurance companies. I almost felt for a quick moment that NARS was working for me??? I got over my delusion and just wanted to say that I had never heard of NARS before, but now that I have, I can blog that it was a positive experience for me and maybe push back on negative reviews of NARS that I may come across.

Keep up the good work!