Paean to Lisa
I spent a good chunk of last weekend getting caught up on my medical bills and insurance claims, an arduous process not unlike doing our taxes—if we did our taxes 10 to 15 times a year.
I updated my big honkin' spreadsheet (currently up to Row 436), did a bunch of forensic accounting, and made three stacks: bills to pay, claims to file, and calls to make.
Some of the calls were to doctors, but most of the issues I needed to resolve required a call to our insurance company. And most of those were not the straightforward "why haven't you reimbursed me yet?" variety.
Instead, the questions required the person on the other end of the line to painstakingly page through a couple dozen different claims and sort out one big bookkeeping mess (theirs, not mine).
About six months ago, when the mess first began ("Claims? What claims? We didn't receive a whole stack of claims totaling $1,011.15, all neatly packaged with an explanatory cover memo. How long ago did you send them?"), I got very, very lucky.
Not because my stack of claims had been lost in the mail.
But because I got a very friendly, competent, and thorough person on the other end of the phone.
Someone who empathized with my distress at having lost months of claims-processing time because of some U.S. Postal Service screw-up.
Someone who promised to personally shepherd the claims through once I re-sent them.
Someone who was kind enough to call me when the duplicate claims arrived, just to put my mind to rest.
Someone named Lisa (her real name).
Lisa also reviewed each of the 42 individual claims once she received them and then proactively called to tell me why about a dozen of them would be rejected and what I needed to do (send further documentation) to avoid that.
So I knew that when I had follow-up questions about those claims, and a few others, it would be in my very best interest to get Lisa on the line.
It took a couple of attempts, including a brief conversation with a different—and very defensive—customer-service representative (these are not her exact words, but they convey the gist: "Why do you need to speak to Lisa? What's so great about Lisa? I can do anything Lisa can do!") but I succeeded.
Here's why she lived up to my expectations:
1) She remembered me.
2) She remembered the whole situation.
3) She asked me how I was doing, with genuine concern and interest.
4) She gave me a blanket invitation to send all of my claims directly to her attention, without checking with her in advance each time.
5) She answered all of my questions, clearly and efficiently.
Oh, and she did all of this while suffering from a migraine.
This is the kind of person Oprah should know about—the kind of person who should be sent on an all-expenses-paid fantasy vacation, only to come home to a brand-new car and a completely redecorated home and a big sack of money sitting on her kitchen table.
Does anyone know Oprah?
I updated my big honkin' spreadsheet (currently up to Row 436), did a bunch of forensic accounting, and made three stacks: bills to pay, claims to file, and calls to make.
Some of the calls were to doctors, but most of the issues I needed to resolve required a call to our insurance company. And most of those were not the straightforward "why haven't you reimbursed me yet?" variety.
Instead, the questions required the person on the other end of the line to painstakingly page through a couple dozen different claims and sort out one big bookkeeping mess (theirs, not mine).
About six months ago, when the mess first began ("Claims? What claims? We didn't receive a whole stack of claims totaling $1,011.15, all neatly packaged with an explanatory cover memo. How long ago did you send them?"), I got very, very lucky.
Not because my stack of claims had been lost in the mail.
But because I got a very friendly, competent, and thorough person on the other end of the phone.
Someone who empathized with my distress at having lost months of claims-processing time because of some U.S. Postal Service screw-up.
Someone who promised to personally shepherd the claims through once I re-sent them.
Someone who was kind enough to call me when the duplicate claims arrived, just to put my mind to rest.
Someone named Lisa (her real name).
Lisa also reviewed each of the 42 individual claims once she received them and then proactively called to tell me why about a dozen of them would be rejected and what I needed to do (send further documentation) to avoid that.
So I knew that when I had follow-up questions about those claims, and a few others, it would be in my very best interest to get Lisa on the line.
It took a couple of attempts, including a brief conversation with a different—and very defensive—customer-service representative (these are not her exact words, but they convey the gist: "Why do you need to speak to Lisa? What's so great about Lisa? I can do anything Lisa can do!") but I succeeded.
Here's why she lived up to my expectations:
1) She remembered me.
2) She remembered the whole situation.
3) She asked me how I was doing, with genuine concern and interest.
4) She gave me a blanket invitation to send all of my claims directly to her attention, without checking with her in advance each time.
5) She answered all of my questions, clearly and efficiently.
Oh, and she did all of this while suffering from a migraine.
This is the kind of person Oprah should know about—the kind of person who should be sent on an all-expenses-paid fantasy vacation, only to come home to a brand-new car and a completely redecorated home and a big sack of money sitting on her kitchen table.
Does anyone know Oprah?
posted by Jody Rosen Knower at 3:45 PM
1 Comments:
I've been reading you... I look forward to Goofus goes Swimming.
I think that you should send Lisa your blog. And, why not email Oprah while you're at it? When you find someone like Lisa, you want them to handle EVERYTHING and why not? Maybe a thoughtful letter to Lisa's manager or the CEO... what better for her personal file when review time comes around?
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