Reasons for poor customer service

Jay Goltz recently wrote a piece at the New York Times looking at three main reasons why customer service sometimes fails in today's business world.

1) Health Insurance Costs -- The cost to insure full time workers is expensive, so many stores have part time staffs which leads to not enough training and high turnover.
2) Pricing changes -- The massive sales that occur every other week create a situation where large staffs are needed, yet when stores are not having these sales, much of the staff is sitting around with a lack of things to do.
3) No more merchants -- The children of the merchants have gone on to receive educations and haven't returned to the family businesses. There is also an occurrence of overeducated decision makers who may be looking at things other than customer service when they are pulling numbers together.

Read the full article here.

Face-to-Face Customer Service

Yesterday we posted that Columbia, which is based on BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, opened up a new strip mall that will sell policies and answer any customer service questions. To add to that story Spokeswoman Lauralee Shapiro mentions:

"I just think with the confusion in the marketplace, it gives an opportunity for people to come in and actually get information for their health care plan."

Do you think that with the current economic situation we will be seeing more personal face-to-face customer service interactions?

Health Insurer Opens up Shop

Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina has opened up a strip mall store in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Relatively new to the health insurance industry, this store will provide a way for customers to buy individual, group and children's insurance. It will also provide an alternative to calling help numbers, as employees in the stores will answer questions about insurance program benefits.

This type of customer care is new to the health insurance industry. Do you think this will catch on beyond Blue Cross Blue Shield?

Source: AP