Why I'm passionate about customer service in Life Insurance

Last week, I was watching the National Spelling Bee as they crowned two winners for the second consecutive year. What an amazing performance! One of the winners spoke of her passionate pursuit of winning the Bee. The comment made me reflect on a question I was asked during my interview with Celent. The question was whether I was passionate about life insurance. I found the question quite interesting. I thought of two recent customer service experiences. My father passed away a year ago and was smart enough to have protected my mother with life insurance. This is the whole point of our industry – to be there in the most difficult time of people’s lives. I’m pleased to say that the claims representative I spoke with was compassionate, efficient and knowledgeable. She obviously had a passion for helping others. The second interaction was not as happy. A problem on a different insurer’s customer portal kept me from completing a desired change. I called the customer service number to complete the update. The customer service representative directed me back to the website. When I told her it was not working, she implied that I was the problem since it was working for everyone else. After a discussion about my perceived ineptness, she reluctantly made the requested change. She was disinterested, annoyed and uncaring. With so much of the today’s interaction being digital, it is crucial that companies hire people with passion. The choices are too many and the personal interactions too few to not take advantage of every opportunity to build customer loyalty. Anything worth doing should include a passion to become the best. Whether you are a spelling bee participant, an analyst or a customer service representative, passion drives the best results. It was a good question, and I can firmly state that I AM passionate about life insurance.