Where is the personal touch in this automated/impersonal/computer age?
- It is wonderful to be able to go to an ATM at 3AM and withdraw cash.
- Forgot to renew your auto insurance? It is really nice to pop into a website, pay via credit/debit card and even download and printout your temporary insurance cards.
- I love shopping on Amazon.com. At 2AM I can read reviews from other customers, find the best bang for the buck, click my mouse and it is delivered in a day or two.
However, if there is a problem, or you have a question, most of the time you have few options:
- Call on the phone and hope that the person you get speaks English and that the question or problem is included in their script.
- Send off an email and wait for an answer that you HOPE is the one you need.
- If you're lucky, they have an "instant chat" feature. Again, you have to hope that they understand your question or problem. While the grammar isn't "American", at least you don't have to figure out their accent and poor English.
This same level of automation/lack of service/no human contact is invading our communities. While banks have tried to replace tellers with ATMs for years and fast food restaurants put the soda machines on the customer's side of the counter and just hand you a cup, it is even in our stores.
Case in point: I can go to Home Depot. Walk in, go around and pick up what I need, check out through an automated checkout line where I do the scanning and bagging, pay and walk out. Never once interacting with another human.
Granted, Home Depot still has friendly and knowledgable employees to answer questions and interact with, but for how much longer?
In "the old days", I'd go into the local hardware store and my purchases were a combination of things I'd pick up off the shelf and things a clerk got for me. If I wanted a pound of nails, the clerk would weigh and bag a pound of them for me. In most cases the clerk remembered my name and I knew theirs.
Once upon a time, you got groceries that way too. You'd tell the grocer what you wanted, say 5 pounds of potatoes, and they pick them, bag and weigh them for you. Then came the self-service super markets. The customer picks, weighs and bags the groceries, then goes through check out to pay for them.
Remember full service gas stations? There didn't used to be any self-service. You'd pull up to the pump, driving over a hose that rang a bell and a real live person would come out, ask what type and how much gas you wanted. Then, while you sat there, got out and stretched your legs, used the bathroom, looked at a map on the wall or bought a bottle of soda from the machine, the attendant filled your car, washed your windows, checked your oil, fan belt and tire pressure. Finally, you'd return to your car, pay him (or sometimes her) and drive off refreshed, your tank full and the car vitals checked for the next leg of your trip.
This certainly doesn't sound like pulling up to a pump, swiping your card and pumping your own gas does it?
Remember the scene from "Back to the Future" where Michael J. Fox wakes up on a bench in the 50's and watches four or five guys in starched Texaco (I think) uniforms race up and start servicing a car that had just pulled in? While there might not have been THAT much customer service, it is certainly better than swiping a card or slipping cash through a slot in a bullet-proof window to a bored clerk who is busy watching TV.
Humans are primates and primates or social animals. We NEED human interaction or we go crazy. Perhaps this explains some things about life today.
The reason for this post though is to point out what customer service is all about. It DOES still exist today, but we have to go looking to find it.
I used to have Progressive as my insurance company. In the time I had them, I only spoke to a human once, when a claims adjuster came to look at my bike after I was the victim of a hit and run. Everything else, from application, to payments, to changes, etc. was all done at my convenience using my web browser. My 30 year old son prefers this way of doing business.
My wife and her mother used to have Farmer's Insurance until the agency owner retired and turned it over to her daughter who soon ran off the customers. For almost 30 years since, my wife had her insurance through AAA.
Now AAA was a pretty good company. But we were just a customer number. You'd never get the same agent on the phone twice. Even at the local office, the faces changed on a regular basis. Then there were a number of small paperwork mistakes. Forgetting to apply a multi-policy discount, not sending a renewal notice or not following up to see why we hadn't renewed, etc.
The whole of my teen years and probably the next ten years or more after I left home, my folks had State Farm insurance through a local agency. Harold Johnson State Farm in Sunnymead, California. Harold was a family man. I think his wife and daughter worked the agency with him. He was "our insurance agent" until the day he retired. If you called his office, you got one of two people, usually it was Harold. He gave great personal service. When I got married (the first time), as a wedding gift, he gave us the use of his vacation cabin in Idyllwild for a week.
I miss that level of personal service though most of our twenty-somethings have never experienced it.
While Linda and I have no claims, no tickets and are actually driving less, AAA raised our rates this again year. So I went looking. I applied on the net to one of those "fill it out once and we'll have a dozen companies give you quotes".
One of the quotes was going to a local State Farm agent, less than four miles from my house. Well, I remembered Harold and the kind of service he gave so I got my hopes up.
Erica called me from the Jason Spronk State Farm Agency and after several discussions it was looking good. So I took some time off of work for Linda and I go in, meet them and see if they were what we wanted.
I'd already told Linda that I'd be willing to pay
more than AAA wanted, if I could get good service.
So far, it appears that Jason's agency is almost a clone of Harold Johnson's. While it is in a strip mall type thing rather than an old converted bungalow, when you walk in, you almost feel like you're in someone's home office. Jason has a very small office for himself, the larger front office has three or four desks that are occupied by his wife and an associate (Erica). None of the furniture is for show. It is all functional, decent quality and pretty much what you'd expect from a guy starting his own business. (Jason has been an agent for eleven years.) I've been in offices where the owner/agent used expensive furnishings to try and impress the customer. I get the feeling that in this office, it is the customer service that is used to impress.
And that is what we got. Customer service. Erica wasn't quite ready for us, so we spent a lot of time in Jason's office shooting the breeze and getting to know each other. As he put it, "I'm applying for a job. I want to be your agent."
With them, they'll know when a payment is due, a renewal is coming up, etc. They'll call and/or email to remind me, use text messaging or even snail mail. Whatever it takes to let me know that there is a problem. Jason likes to meet with customers once a year to review their lives and insurance needs. Yes, this may get him more residuals from premiums, but it also best serves his customers. The job of an agent is primarily to make sure that their customers are protected. Their pay for doing their job is getting a small amount of the insurance premium as income (residuals).
It worked. Between, Jason and Erica, meeting Jason's wife Kari and their two daughters (no they aren't employees yet.) Linda and I walked out with a new agent, better insurance coverage at only slightly more money and the feeling of satisfaction of find good people and making new friends. We know that if we need advice or have a problem, there is someone just a phone call, email or short drive away that knows us and can help as opposed to the agent de jour on the phone in a cubicle in another state.
So real customer service and human interaction IS available. You just have to look for it. In Henderson, Nevada, one of those places is Jason Spronk State Farm Insurance.
Mr. Spronk sums it all up on his
website in his mission statement: "Our Mission is to build relationships one at a time."
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. Then again, a number of the warnings above would apply to this movie.