More than six months ago, I had penned a post on what proactive customer relationship means to me, as a response to David Churbuck’s (VP Web Marketing, Lenovo) post on losing me as a customer because of a defective Laptop that refused to be repaired (A detailed review of which i covered on blogcritics, and spent an entire month writing about). Almost six months later, I am forced to pen down another incident that has happened to me in the past few weeks, and needed a post, partly because I wanted to revisit my post on customer relationships.
But this time around, its not a crib, its not a rant, but simply a praise of how proactive customer relationship matters in today’s world. And it came from a company whom I have only heard mixed reviews: Progressive Auto Insurance.
First a backgrounder: A few months ago I moved from Geico auto insurance to Progressive auto insurance because Geico refused to reduce my premium even after being their customer for over two years. What’s more, Progressive’s coverage was at least thrice as better than Geico’s for nearly 200 bucks less. It was a no-brainer for me to shift to Progressive. I was forewarned by friends against it, colleagues didn’t think changing from Geico to Progressive was an exciting idea and such, but the offer was too good to resist. And I was pissed that when I did want to cancel my insurance, Geico wanted to price match Progressive to keep me around. (So much for being a loyal customer!)
To cut the long story short, exactly three weeks ago, I met with an accident, where my car was in a bad shape and non-driveable. Luckily it happened in a parking lot, and nobody was injured, but my car was in a bad shape – the rear door completely broken, glass shattered, the front side view mirror broken, wheels misaligned and paint scrapped. This was the first time ever I have been involved in an accident, and having no idea at all, the first thing I did after insurances were exchanged with other driver was to call my insurance: Progressive.
That was the only call I ever made to Progressive. From that point on, not once did I ever have to dial to contact anybody at Progressive for my car repair, insurance claim, rental etc. What’s more it was the proactive nature of not just my claim agent, but everyone involved in the chain that left me highly impressed.
Why am I writing this post? To clearly illustrate the points I mentioned in that post and how I think Progressive scored on all counts. I had written:
I will use Lenovo as an example to talk about pro-active customer relationship a bit, and what Lenovo could have done, or could do in future. This applies to how I see pro-active customer satisfaction in general too.
> Set Expectations. Then follow on it
> Do your research before you talk to the customer
> Retain the customer, not his money. Think outside the box.
> Don’t keep fixing the same thing again and again
> Customer is the king
> Customers build brand
After my first call to Progressive, within 10 minutes my insurance agent gave me a call, in spite being told on phone that my agent would get back to me in another 2 hours. Why did he call? To let me know he had already got my case, and he was running a bit late, so he would call me in another 2 hours.
As promised he called me up in 2 hours to ask me if I could hold another 1 hour for him as he was late, profusely apologizing for the delay. After a hour he called me up, gave me my options – my car would be towed that day to a body shop near my place, I would be given a rental car to move around and I will be posted on further updates.
It is quite impressive the speed at which everything was handled. The accident occurred at 1.00pm in afternoon; by 4.00pm I was contacted by Enterprise rental for a car rental. By five my car had been towed. By the time day had ended, I was already at peace that my vehicle was being taken care of.
By next day afternoon, I was contacted by yet another sub-ordinate of my agent who was at the body shop with complete details on what was wrong with the car and expected time frame to fix it, and till then I could drive the rental. If I had an issue I could always exchange the rental anytime. I was given a time frame of 2 weeks to get the car in order.
Believe it or not, I got a call back from the subordinate every 4 days to give me an update on how things were going with the repair and what status my car was in; not once I had to bother about calling anybody up for the status.
Finally after two weeks when I did go to pick up my car, the body shop discovered a problem that had gone unnoticed. And it would take another two days to fix the problem. I was fine as I already had a rental with me. I left without my car.
In another hour, my subordinate was already on the phone apologizing for the whole delay and unexpected problems in the car. She promised to keep me completely in loop about when my car would be repaired. Eventually the bodyshop took another 7 days to fix the problem, and trust me I got a call every second day of the week by the subordinate informing me about the car.
Today, I went and picked up the car in the evening. It is looking absolutely stunning. And I just got off a call from the subordinate on the phone who wanted to know if everything was fine and up to my expectations in my car. Heck, it was much better than I thought it would be.
Note – I did not make one single call after my initial call. To me, this IS proactive customer service. Not once I was kept out of loop at any stage.
In between the whole process, the insurance companies also needed to do their research regarding the accident. When the agent wanted a clear explanation of what had happened, it was reassuring to know that he knew the exact area where I had the accident. Heck he even knew the parking lot and the building I was in. How? On his way back from work the previous day he had stopped by my building at night and checked out the area. Our communications went off absolutely smoothly – I didn’t even meet him as everything was explained and understood on the phone. I was like – wow – that was great!
Three weeks later, today sitting in my car, the first thing that came to my mind was – “I have to blog about this!â€
Did Progressive do all the points I mentioned?
Set Expectations. Then follow on it – YES
Do your research before you talk to the customer – YES
Retain the customer, not his money. Think outside the box. – YES
Don’t keep fixing the same thing again and again – YES
Customer is the king – YES
Customers build brand – YES
At the end of it all, yes, I do know that I can expect my premiums to go up because of this accident, or maybe not. But even if it did, would I remain with Progressive? Absolutely hell, yes. And I have asked at least three of my friends to switch after such a pleasant experience.
Great job David Markey (my insurance agent); Thank you!!