The disaster began with a telephone call. The caller told my client that the primary insurance product my client sells, was not paying the caller’s claims. He went on to say that the insurance company was being black balled by a major medical service provider. When he asked the caller, “Why?” all he got was, “I really don’t know.”
My client was devastated. Almost immediately, several users of the service started canceling their memberships. He was presiding over a train wreck. And with each cancellation call, he was losing money. He did what he knew to do—he started writing emails to the insurance company to see what happened. They did not respond. He then began a chaotic downward spiral of useless activity. He started looking for a new product sell. Then, finally, he contacted me.
After listening to what happened in detail, I suggested that his first step was to step back. There was something about this scenario that didn’t make sense to me. It was all too sudden. What I suggested that he do is to check out the current ratings of the product’s performance on the internet. And, talk to someone who could make a difference at the company to see from their point of view what happened to make the end user blackball the service. His reply was that he did email them. I repeated what I said, talk to a decision maker at the company. Stay on the telephone line until you reach a decision maker. Do not leave a message; stay on the line.
My client did what I asked him to do. He talked to a decision maker at the company. The man was aware of the problem; however he did not know that his company was being blackballed by the user. My client’s action caused a turnaround in the company. The decision maker could see that he needed to take immediate action in order to resolve the end users complaints.
There is not yet a conclusion. However, there will be a change in the relationship between the two companies. It was caused by my client. He was willing to take a stand for his product, and he had the courage to demand that attention be paid to the problem.
So what’s in this for you? You have the right to stand for what you believe in. When something is not right, you have the right to bring attention to the problem and ask that it be fixed. This is how good business practices happen.
