Or
The BUPA CLONE WARS
Dear
wonderful reader, who normally expects writerly news and information here, I endured
the misfortune of having nearly four hours of my writing time taken by a
company delivering extraordinarily bad service. So I thought I would take the
opportunity to write an amusing take on it, so that the time wasn’t entirely
wasted.
Dear BUPA Management,
In
your blurb on your site, you claim:
“We don’t make claims. We pay them.
When you make a claim on your health cover,
it shouldn't be hard to get it paid.”
It “shouldn’t
be hard,” but it’s very hard; its almost impossible. Also at great variance to
what you claim is your concept of “urgent escalation.” So I’m going to help you
out here, as customer service is near and dear to my heart, and I’m going to take
more of my valuable writing time to share my story with you and my friends and
readers.
Get
yourself a coffee. This is a long read, but you will find it a valuable
experience in helping you understand what is going wrong for you in your service
department. The oft repeated catch phrase by your customer service people (and
I call them that very loosely) of “I’m trying to understand what has happened
here,” makes me wonder if I have been speaking to people at all. I wonder if
perhaps your call centre is staffed by clones, whose role is to frustrate your
customers so that they give up and go away, thus lessening the wait time.
Let
me enlighten you as to what has happened, so that you don’t have to repeat that
phrase when it comes to my complaint ever again, and you can help your clones “understand."
We
recently changed over to you from a health fund with which we’ve had a very
good experience for ten years. Our reason for moving was that you promised there
would be savings for us (yes there were) and that we would receive valued
customer service as we were coming via a corporate plan through a multinational
billion-dollar company for whom my husband works.
I’m
afraid you misrepresented your dedication to service, as what I received would
be the equivalent of what I now call “The Clone Wars.”
First
up, when I tried to make a simple claim for optical for two invoices for
glasses for my son and myself, your online service denied it because of some
problem with a clearance certificate from the previous provider. No biggie. We
got the certificate for you. Would have been nice if you chased it up, or told
us we needed to chase it up. But, still it was one small problem, which I’ve
since found created a whole other BIG problem.
Weeks
later, when said certificate finally was sent to you and we did claim online, we
were paid short of the amount expected and one of the claims was denied for
some reason, which necessitated my call to you.
“Ah
yes,” says the customer service operator (let me call them Clone 1), “it looks
like the system has registered it as a duplicate claim because of the first
rejected claim. So I will escalate this as an urgent matter to the Claims
Department, and they will get back to you within 48 hours.”
“Hmm,”
he adds, “I don’t know why this has happened. I’d like to understand why this has
happened. Its an interesting one.” (This is an important line because every one
of your Customer Service People Clones said this line. By the
fifth clone person, I wanted to reach through the line and rip out their brain
chips or whatever you plug into them to have them repeat the same damn thing to
everything.
Sorry,
I digress... Clone 1 goes on to request that I please email a copy of the
invoices to assist the Claims Department in fixing it. This I did immediately
on the 29th April.
Then
I wait. In fact, I gave you a whole week to reply. Considering Clone 1 had
labeled my claim urgent and escalated it and assured me someone would get back to
me within forty-eight hours, quite frankly I was worried. I thought I’d better
call you again. You see, I suddenly realised that I hadn’t thought to ask what
your version of “urgent” actually was, since your version of “urgent” and mine was
clearly different. Clone 1 did say “48 hours,” but I didn’t think to ask if you
meant consecutive hours or you were
spreading them out over a few weeks.
This
brings me to yesterday’s phone call at around 4.30pm, Perth time, seven days
after my Clone 1 phone call. The time is important, and I will get to that in a
minute. The 2nd Customer Service Clone (Clone 2), a young man who
had a just as cheery and trying-to-seem-helpful-whilst-offering-no-help
personality as Clone 1, again repeated your company line after I explained my
troubles over a simple claim.
He
kept me on the line, while he read all the notes and said. “Hmm. Now I’m trying to
understand what has happened here.”
Then
he did some calculations, which I think he may have pulled out of his hat or
some other place where you keep them there, and told me that the wrong amount
had been paid and it should be a few dollars more. Not the full amount of
refund like you were meant to pay me, though. Then he repeated. “Hmm, now I’m trying to
understand what’s happened here.” He just kept saying that phrase, as if his
chip was malfunctioning, poor guy.
By
then, I was trying to understand why he kept saying that. I truly wondered if I stopped him there, and pressed number 3 on my dial pad and then hit #, if I would get some other answer. That the number 1 I had pressed for customer service had actually got me through to the Automated
Clone Department. I really needed a human that would simply understand I was a
customer who just wanted some… service from the Customer SERVICE Department.
He
couldn’t help me. His department couldn’t help me. Clone 2 offered to escalate
it as urgent. He didn’t realize that
I understood that BUPA’s version of urgent,
was different to mine.
I
worked that out all by myself and without reading your brochures; I did this while waiting for you to call back and waiting on your line and waiting for your clones to “try to
understand what has happened here.” And BUPA I don’t like your version. It kind of sucks really, and its so far from good customer service that…
I digress, sorry, I get worked up…
So I
declined Clone 2’s non-helpful offer, and asked to speak to the person above him—maybe
someone higher up on the Clone ladder. Nothing against clones here. I like
clones, but they shouldn’t work in customer service, unless they’re cloned from
the very best customer service clones. These clearly were not.
Then
came the next surprise, even by clone standard it was low. I had called at the wrong time,
according to Clone 2. You see, we West Australians are two hours behind the East
Coast, so it was “after hours” where he was situated in Clone Land.
Therefore there were no Clone Managers he could put me through to.
Wow.
A big company like you, Australia-wide (world-wide, in fact), who boasts that
3.7 million Australians have entrusted their health insurance with you, that isn’t
set up to deal with the two-hour time difference. Management clones working an extra two hours or placed on a 2 hour later shift surely
don’t cost that much more than your average Customer Service Clones. We’re
only talking two hours, people!
Here’s a free tip, too. West Australians don’t like to
be told they’re calling out of normal business hours. It’s kind of insulting
when you, BUPA, know that you have West Australian customers. I mean you
don’t give us a discount in our premiums because we don’t get the full service
with top class management clones after 3pm.
By
this stage, you can understand, I was a little frustrated. This was my 2nd
phone call, a week after the first, plus I’d sent an email and the whole clearance certificate debacle was now playing on my mind. Did I mention that
I received an acknowledgement of my email, three whole days after my email arrived with you, informing
me that someone would get back to me within 48 to 72 hours? That’s horrendously
slow. Surely Email Handling Clones are cheaper than the Customer Service
Clones. They, at least, don’t have to talk.
I
said to this one, Clone 3, who was still muttering, “I’m trying to understand
what’s happened here,” that I expected someone to call me back the next day, and
that was my version of urgent.
Clone 3 was now sounding a touch harassed. Perhaps something went wrong in the
cloning process, but he wasn't dealing well with an unhappy customer who’d been
treated poorly. His final words that he thought were comforting for me, but
were not: He would do the best he could and escalate it to “Urgent.”
Isn’t
that what the other clone did? Huh?
Next
day… guess what? No phone call. I wanted to finalise it. These clones were
getting under my skin. I decided to call again, because I didn’t believe they
would call me back as they’d promised. Remember I didn’t understand the “urgent”
system. It could be years and I hate loose ends.
Ah, I
get another Customer Service Clone, Clone 4, who wants to… you guessed it
“understand what has happened here.”
Clone
4 also couldn’t tell me whether or not BUPA would be paying my claim any time
soon. They had to… guess what? Escalate it to “urgent.”
How
many urgent levels do you have? I think, in my book, I was on Urgent Level 5 by this stage
(the next one is code red where my head explodes and we go to Defcon 5 where submarines all over the planet "Dive"). But none of the clones seemed
prepared to reveal what urgent level I needed to be on in order to get my
simple claim paid. We’re talking $358 here. Did I mention that?
Here’s
how the customer service clone performed just for your feedback, because I think
you won’t want to replicate this one. The conversation is abbreviated, too; it went on for fifteen minutes before this excerpt.
Me: It seems to me the problem lies with the claims department. Can you put me through to the Claims Department and I'll sort it out with them.
Clone 4: I can't put you through to the Claims Department. They don't take calls.
Me: Why not?
Clone 4: They just do claims. They don't talk to customers.
Me: How do I get to communicate with them?
Clone 4: Through me. I escalate it to "Urgent" (oh brother, I thought, not the "urgent" merry-go-round again)
Me: Can you please put me through to a manager above you, because I’m not getting
off the phone until someone tells me they’ve processed the claim and are paying
me. I’ve wasted a lot of time on this over nothing.
Clone
4: Oh, I don’t think you’ve wasted time over nothing. It’s not because of nothing.
Me: That’s it. Put me through to a manager.
Clone
4: Can I help you with something?
Me: No, you can’t. It’s not working for me with
you. I want to speak to someone above you. (Head clone or something, I thought.
I know it’s not polite to call them clones to their faces.)
Clone
4: But why? What’s it about?
Me: My claim!!!! (I wanted to say: You need
something genetically modified, I think, like your brain.)
Clone
4: But what exactly, so I can tell
them?
Me: For God’s sake. Just tell them it’s about
bad customer service (and I think to myself, annoying clones)
Clone
4: What customer service?
Me: Exactly.
And the nothing comment. I didn’t like your "nothing" comment. (I’m almost
speechless, stuttering.)
Clone
4: I can transfer you to the
Customer Relations Department and inform them that its about bad service. The wait
is 50 minutes!!! (Yep you read that right 50 minutes!!!)
BUPA, do you really need to transfer me to your Customer Relations Department to complain about your service so that you understand that its bad service to tell someone that 50 minutes is an okay wait time? Holy hell. Who runs this place? The Evil Competition Clones who are
going to destroy the BUPA business from the inside?
By
this time, I’ve been on the phone for 1 hour and 10 minutes. I waited another
ten minutes, then hung up and called back. I figured (while I was waiting and
listening to your message about how much you value your customers) that Clone
4 had put me on perpetual hold. I started to think that Clone 4 might be worried that I would complain about
them, then your Clone Department would put them back in the tank and reuse their body
cells to create another clone. Clone 4 forgot that you record their calls for
customer service training, so they were fried meat anyway.
I
call back… next Customer Service Clone, Clone 5, and I have a similar
conversation. “Hmm," she says, "let me read through the notes. Let me see if I
can understand what has happened.”
Me: I just want you to put me through to the
Customer Relations person who can help me. I know you can’t help me because none of you
(clones) in Customer Service (yes they’re two different departments) have been
able to help so far. (I think: you don’t have the magic ring, or wand or power
or whatever it is you need to just give me my small amount of claim money.)
Clone
5: I will transfer you, but, hmm, I’m
just trying to understand what’s happened here.”
Me: Hmmm. I don’t care what you are trying to
understand. I’ve been on the phone for almost two hours. If you want to
understand it, do it on your own time.
Clone
5: I’ll put you through to
Customer Relations, but the wait time is 30 minutes.
Me: Yes, why don’t I wait. I’m getting good at
waiting on your line. And while I’m waiting I’ll be tweeting to my 42,000
followers and all my Facebook friends about my wait, and about you, and how you’ve
wasted my time over a nothing claim. So, do let whoever is in charge know that’s what’s happening
while I’m waiting.
I
waited. Listened again to how good you think you are to your customers on your recorded message and how
much you love your customers and how you invest all your profits back for
the members (and attempting to improve your cloning techniques). It gets old. I can repeat the message verbatim.
Then
I thought: this Clone 5 could be pulling the same trick as Clone 4 to avoid going
back in the dissolving tubs. So I hung up and called back again. Surely I could
find the one clone who might understand that my call was possibly the one call
that needed to jump the queue or have a much
higher-up-on-the-corporate-ladder-clone deal with it. I just needed one that
could deal with this now very, very frustrated customer. You must train one of
them for that. Surely one…
I
hung up and tried again. Clone 6 did the trick.
Clone
6: Do you want to tell me what’s
happened?
Me: No, I think its best for you and for me if
you just put me through to the Customer Relations Department. You don’t need to
understand what has happened. You just need to hit a button and put me through
to Customer Relations. The notes are there. They keep telling me they’re making
notes. (I’m thinking: Is there not a bloody flashing banner over my account
number now, above the damn notes so you don’t keep asking What has happened?)
Aside
Note to BUPA on Clone 6: This one
is a good one to clone again. If you are listening back through the phone calls
that are recorded in order to “improve your customer service experience,”
(would take quite a bit to improve by the way) please note that she did a
good job and listened to me and put me through. She didn’t mutter “I need to
understand what’s happened here.” Good clone.
Ten
minutes later, after Clone 6 puts me through to the Customer Relations Department. (You can’t call this Department
directly by the way. The clones have to put you through.) Where was I? Oh yes,
ten minutes after Clone 6 puts me through…
… only
ten, not fifty, not thirty... I’m on to a top level clone in customer relations
who actually suggested that she familiarise herself with the file off-phone and then call me back
in… wait for it... twenty minutes. Ta-da!!! Heck twenty minutes! So they can do it. A miracle of
service.
Me: Why don’t the others (clones) offer to call
me back in twenty minutes?
Customer
Relations Clone 1: They aren’t able to
make phone calls out. We’re the only ones who can do that. Anything that they can’t
handle, they escalate to us. We can’t call people back immediately. Normally,
we’re only allocated a window of time when we don’t take phone calls and we can then make
phone calls. That is when we can call customers back. (I think: What???
This is clone-speak. Only clones understand this logic.)
Me: But they escalated it to you a week ago, and
that didn’t work.
Customer
Relations Clone 1: Yes, something has
gone wrong. We’re prepared to offer you one month’s premium as compensation for
your trouble. (I’d asked for the compensation from Clone 3, but that one
told me that BUPA doesn’t give compensation (obviously this was above their
clone pay-grade.)
Customer
Relations Clone 1 calls me back within thirty minutes. Yes, they will pay me my claim money on Monday. She’s sorted it out and fixed all the things that had gone
wrong to cause the claims not to be paid.
Me: Why did it have to come to this?
Customer Relations Clone 1: We know we are having problems with customer
service at the moment, and trying really, really hard to fix it.
You
think?
I suggest you find the defective clone and stop cloning them. That would be an easy fix. I'll even tell you where to find them. They're somewhere up the management food chain. They work out how to save money by cutting staff and not properly training the ones that are left. "Shhh," they say, "the customers will barely notice. They're used to this kind of service. It's crap everywhere anyway. Why should we be different?"
The
final insult must surely be that, after all this, I go to my Facebook page to
see that BUPA has actually responded to my complaint that I posted on their FB
page while I waited for the clones to help me.
I'd also tweeted the events to my followers and tagged @BupaAustralia in
on the multiple tweets and retweets, and received no acknowledgement. I’d
written all over their Facebook page, too.
The BUPA Facebook Page Clone left me a message on Facebook and also asked me to DM her in future if I needed any help. I’m sure that would be so good for you, BUPA, if your customers didn’t make their complaints public, but how is that fair to other
potential customers not to see the complaints? And if the Facebook Page Clone can solve all my problems with a quick DM, then why don't they answer the phones or why don't we DM all our complaints instead of using the phone?
Here's my recommendations BUPA
BUPA, if you want to advertise that customers are important, then don’t just pay it lip service.
If
you are going to use clones, then programme them properly.
If
you are going to have social media accounts, then check them more than once a
day, so that you can offer assistance before tweets like mine are retweeted to
hundreds of thousands of people. You do not know now how many people changed their
mind about moving to you because of what happened to me today. Or how many in the
future, now that I’ve posted this on my blog. One of my friends has genuinely
reversed her decision to move over to you because of this. She will tell
others.
Finally,
when a customer calls you and tells you they’re having a bad experience, don’t
EVER say to them, “Now let me try and understand this,” and “We’re escalating
this to urgent, and we’ll call you back in the next 48 hours.” Those two
phrases don’t go together. They’re oxymoronic.
BUPA, please know, also, that this may cost you more money thanks to my frustration and
angst levels having risen to URGENT levels today, I may have a heart operation claim
coming through to you shortly. So how economic are your customer service clones
now?
No
more clones please, my heart can’t take it.
#BUPASERVICEFAIL