How to screw up a great customer experience! And then make a superb comeback!

You can always count on businesses to f@*k it up – (unfortunately) after having done (almost) everything right! Here’s a quick guide on how to do that seamlessly!

This piece is not about ranting or preaching. This story based on the real-life incidents and incidentally valuable lessons on customer experience could be derived out from it. Happy reading!

Almost a year back we had a hospitalisation in our family. Quite dramatic! It was a midnight emergency, so obviously things were chaotic and unplanned. Do you remember this iconic dialogue from Munna Bhai MBBS?

“Woh bahar casualty mein koi marne ki haalat mein raha, toh usko form bharna zaroori hai kya?”

Exactly were my feelings when I was asked to fill hectic forms to avail the cashless insurance facility! One, who in the world remembers the Health Insurance policy number? Two, do I stay around the patient or go mad filling complicated forms that too in an office far away from the Emergency Section? Second one was a no brainer, of course one has to be around the traumatized patient and not break head filling stupid forms. But learnt a valuable lesson from the first one – Always keep the Health Insurance copy handy on mobile and don’t just rely on the phone, try and memorise the policy number by heart. A small effort can pay huge dividends!

Coming back to our story… The hospitalisation happened, I swiped my credit card to pay the hospital deposit and as soon as I got a chance, I dropped an email to my office HR to inform the insurance company (Corporate Group Health Insurance) since I anticipated that the next day, I won’t have any energy to call up my personal Health Insurance provider. Also, how would I inform the personal Health Insurance provider when I don’t have the policy details handy. Digging the email inbox to get hold of policy was too daunting a task for me – thanks to more than 3 lakh unread emails in my Gmail, majority junk! Email marketing, I hate you! A couple of years back I had changed my email ID in all BFSI records to a dedicated email ID (meant only for financial matters), but somehow had missed changing it in case of my Health Insurance ??. This is another valuable tip – Keep a separate email ID for all investments and insurance policies! However, this doesn’t substitute the act memorising the important details like Health Insurance policy number etc.

After 3 days of hospitalisation, we were out from the hospital and I had a consolation that I didn’t need to use my personal Health Insurance policy for this claim and hopefully I'll not need to break my head filling claim forms since office HR would do the needful. Lesson number 3 – Always be aware about the exact benefits of your Corporate Group Health Insurance policy, more so the benefits it doesn’t offer. The cheap employers, to save on premium cost, more than often end up buying substandard coverages. I also discovered this when almost 50% of my claim amount (let's call the amount X for ease of reference) got deducted because I also had an over smart employer!

How can I forget another misadventure pertaining to the same hospitalisation! The claim got cleared almost after 3 months because of some objections from the CGHI provider. I had no idea that in case of non-cashless claims one is also expected to submit something called as ICP along with the other claim documents. Yes, the Indoor Case Papers! That’s lesson number 4 for you all ??! Always get hold of these ICPs at the time of the discharge itself as extracting these later again is a painful process that one wouldn’t want to undergo while managing a medical emergency. Oh man, this article is becoming too much! So many learnings ??! The customer experience learning is yet to come ??, so you better carry on with reading this piece!

Being a baniya, how can I let go a substantial chunk of money! So, I did my research and figured that the deductions (the ones made by the Corporate Group Insurance provider) can be claimed in my personal policy, of course IF that’s not a cheap / substandard policy! I asked the Corporate Group Insurance provider for all my original documents and those folks for a change were extremely efficient this time. They sent me the entire file (with over 100 documents in it!) in no time.

So sometime in August 2023 one new item got added in my personal tasks-to-do list or job list as we popularly know it. As a person I’m wired not to maintain a very hefty job list, so whatever that qualifies to be a less-important unfinished task, it gets churned out from my TTDs very regularly. For obvious reasons, putting this claim managed to retain a spot in my personal job lists ever since then. Of course, nothing to be proud of - It was utmost stupid of me to delay putting the claim (for deductions) to my personal Health Insurance provider HDFC Ergo. My worries kept growing because in my mind with every passing day the chances of getting a seamless claim experience were becoming more and more a distant possibility. I still have no clue why the hell I delayed it till very recently! The fear of painful and hectic process usually involved in making claims (especially in complex cases like this one where one just wants to claim the deducted amount) is the only possible reason I can think of beyond procrastination, of course.

Fast forward to May 3, 2023… The day my guilt of not submitting the claim tipped and I determined to knock this task off my personal job list! I made a call to HDFC Ergo and asked for the procedure to tackle such claims. Their customer care executive patiently heard me and diligently explained me the process. I almost shat in my pants imagining myself scanning over 100 documents to upload on HDFC Ergo’s online platform. Their platform and their process otherwise, to my surprise, was fairly straightforward. To act cute I asked the executive, can I just courier the entire file? She was a bit surprised because why would anyone want to opt for sending a courier (against a more efficient option uploading the scanned documents) as it involves cost and it delays the process by a couple of days. But when I told her that there are more than 100 pages, she happily shared the exact address of their Noida office.

I got into the act immediately. I was still not able to believe that I delayed such a simple process by almost a year and that caused blocking of significant funds! It took me less than 70 minutes to finish the entire process including handing over the documents parcel to the nearby courier outlet. We live in such a complex world today that sometimes when things happen so easily and are so simple, we tend to feel skeptic “Something is wrong for sure!”. This was Friday evening. Since it was a complicated case and since the amount involved was substantial (X), I was a bit nervous. On Monday evening, I received a message from courier that the parcel has been delivered to the destination. Immediately I called up the customer care to double check if it has been duly received. The executive didn’t had an exact update but I was assured that I’ll get a call back from their end on Tuesday morning.

Next morning sharp at 10:07 AM, I received a call from HDFC Ergo confirming the receipt of my parcel. She also confirmed than in a week’s time the claim shall be cleared.

At 12:50 PM I received a message from HDFC Ergo stating that the claim has been approved. I was obviously elated! Followed by another message at 2:55 PM from my bank stating the credit of an amount more than the double of X (deductions)! Unfreakingbelievable!

That’s some efficiency man! Wait! That’s also a lot of generosity! So instead of clearing only the deductions (X), HDFC Ergo actually cleared the entire amount! WOWWWW! Of course, that didn’t make me extra happy because I was aware that I will need to return the excess amount to them. I called up the customer care immediately and informed them about the entire case.

You must be wondering how’s that a screwed experience, everything is more than perfect, right? Let me pour my heart out ??!

On May 7, 2024 like a responsible consumer, I proactively informed them about the excess payment. Today it's May 16, 2024 and I am almost made to believe that honesty isn’t the best policy. The easier way to take care of my ethical itch would have been to just donate the excess amount. Why do I say so? Be patient, the story is almost on the anvil of getting over!

In the last 10 days I have received 10 calls from HDFC Ergo (including 2 missed calls, missed deliberately as I had warned them after Call # 7 that I won’t be taking any more calls on this matter as this is almost harassing me and penalizing me for my good deed!) asking for same damn information – “Can you please share the excess payment?”. My response for first 4 times was standard – “I had shared the ENTIRE file with you guys. The initial few pages had a categoric mention of split between money that the corporate insurance provider had paid me and the relevant deductions. I DON’T have any copy of the documents. So, I won’t be able to help you with ANY more information!”.

This was becoming worse than getting spammed by calls from Bajaj Finance because I couldn’t have just ignored their calls because I am sitting on a significant amount that doesn’t belong to me. So today I took their call and this time I was really rude! Poor caller! I ended the call with a 3-point ultimatum:

• NO more calls please – I’ll NOT take ANY more calls!
• By coming Saturday i.e., May 18, 2024 if I am not told the resolution, I will donate the excess money and there’s NO way the same could be recovered from me!
• Interact with me ONLY over emails. If I get a single more call, I will cancel the policy too!

Refer to my earlier post https://shorturl.at/zDJ24 regarding my fabulous experience with HDFC ERGO General Insurance , written not too long back. And see how they have pushed me to write a negative post in less than 10 days! The unfortunate aspect here is that they aren’t getting all this flack because they failed in delivering their core promise, but because they are absolutely clueless on how to manage their data and eventually the customer experience! Remember, doesn't matter what you manufacture or sell, ultimately we are all in the business of delivering customer experience. Period.

Marketers tend to drool over data but the customer data is far beyond just a mobile number or an email ID or a date of birth! It involves much more, unfortunately all of that gets conveniently ignored:

1. The feedback: Document the customer’s feedback thoroughly so that the next caller doesn’t start from the ground zero!
2. The recorded calls: Make such data (even the minutest of the feedbacks) available to the entire calling force and ensure that NO one is allowed to contact the customer again till they listen to the last few calls!
3. The sentiments: The documented feedback and the recorded calls aren’t enough if you are obsessed about CX – Using AI, the brands & businesses need to extract the underlying customer sentiments. This Sentimental Analysis Report would highlight the core issues (along with recommended POA / preparations) and equip the next caller better to handle the tough / tricky conversations!
4. The Sentimental Analysis Report should also be able to make recommendations like the profile of the next caller (experience and skill sets) – What kind of a caller is better suited to handle the next conversation!
5. Over a period of time, the ML would make the system intelligent enough to even throw recommendations about who should be making the next call – Is Shyam better suited? Or Renu would handle it better? Or Irfan because he has more experience? Or Celina who is a veteran in handling such conversations? And more importantly who should NOT be making the next call, that’s equally important! That’s the power of technology!

The brands & businesses are on a wild goose chase when it comes to deployment of technology in the areas of data and AI / ML. Remember, these are just tools to do the business more efficiently. The ultimate success would always depend upon your intent. And to me, EVERY business needs to have the same intent – Serve every customer with a kickass customer experience, come what may. And do that before they kick your ass!

EDIT:

To complete the case study, I am sharing the screenshots of last 2 emails exchanged between HDFC ERGO General Insurance and me. The first one is their email. Have a look!

And here's my response:

The very fact that they respected my feedback shows how brilliant their ethos are. Yes, they screwed up for a brief while and that had genuinely pissed me off. But remember, form is temporary but the class is permanent! More importantly, never forget that CONSUMER IS EXTREMELY FORGIVING. A genuine attempt to course correct would always keep brands in the game!

I actually wanted to take this post off but the professor in me feels that this is a great case study and it deserves to be seen by many more brands and brand custodians to learn rich lessons. The lessons here are priceless from customer experience stand point.

HDFC ERGO General Insurance : YOU GUYS ARE FANTASTIC! Yes, in my email I had promised that I will take the post down. But I have changed my mind - As a brand and as a business, you have ALL the reasons to take pride in everything you have done. In fact this case study is a real testimony to your brilliance. Remember, this piece isn't an ugly scar. It's a war mark you should be showing off to show off your brilliance and bravery! Please feel free to use it in your employee on-boarding material!