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I work for a medical insurance company. Something went wrong. We’ll probably never be told what happened. We weren’t told the last time that something huge went wrong that meant we would get us a huge influx of calls all about the same thing.
So something happened that triggered letters going out that the member had been assigned a new PCP. Over a thousand letters. They started arriving in mailboxes today. It ran the gamut of calls. From people who were chill to people who were in tears because they had been seeing their doctor for decades. Infuriating were the people who called to say “Oh. I changed my PCP ages ago. I guess I should have told you about that, huh?”
Award for WTF for today is this lady. She was distraught right from the beginning.
“How do you think I feel receiving this horrible news with no warning or explanation!”
I explained that it was an error. I fixed it in the system. All done! Bye now.
Nope. She wanted to know how we could do this to her. She wanted me to know how she had been through thick and thin with her doctor. She might have even mentioned cancer. I don’t even know. It was done. Fixed. What more could she possibly want?
She Wanted Answers!
She wanted to know why we did it. She wanted to know why we would do it without any warning. She wanted to know why we thought any of this was an acceptable way of treating somebody who had been a loyal member for years. She wanted to speak to a supervisor. I’m happy to escalate. I honestly have no clue what else I could have said to her. Ugh. And some of the higher ups have been hinting that I could be considered to become tier 2. I don’t know if I could take this kind of call more often.
Anyway. I asked her if she would mind holding so I could connect her with a manager. She didn’t want to wait for too long. It was late (4:30PM). She was tired. Her head hurt. She was so stressed about what this letter had put her through. She went on like this for over 3 minutes. She finally agreed and I waited on hold for 3 minutes for tier 2 but they didn’t answer. Probably because they were flooded with similar calls. They may be a bit understaffed too. Which would explain why I would be considered.
Next level of escalation is to email the team leaders and offer a call back in 24-48 hours. This goes over as well as you’d expect. She is practically wailing about how can we expect this to be an acceptable level of customer service. She has been loyal to us for years! “Wright that down in my notes!” The whole time she is doing that voice some older ladies have. Its loud but its somehow not quite yelling. There will be an occasional quiver that could be tears or it could be fury.
So I read back some of what I have written. “Member is very angry.”
“Oh no, dear. I’m not ‘very angry’. I’m bewildered and confused. Don’t put angry. That wouldn’t look very good. Would it?”
And tomorrow will start of with all the people who didn’t check their mail yet.
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