Customer care stories... Chapter 4

Chapter 4: ICICI Prudential!! 

not all customer care stories are bad. there are these few occasional good ones that u come across which re-inforce the fact that somewhere some customer care execs know their jobs.. this was a particularly interesting and nice story for me, specially cause this was a rather round about situation and needed to be tackled by someone who knew the systems and was well versed with her work. (her only cause this cc exec was a lady.. no reference to a gendre of the society!! :))

the background is: i have a health insurance with ICICI Prudential and i pay the premium for it once a yr.  so when i had to make my payment this yr, it so turned out that i accidently made the payment twice, once from my credit card and the 2nd time from my bank account. the 2nd attempt from the bank account was made only cause the online interface gave me an error message when i tried the credit card payment..  thats besides the point. so ICICI Pru people call me and tell me that i have made a premium payment twice and if i can show either proof they will refund my amount. credit card statements come once a month, mine was not due for another 20 days, so bank account statement was the best thing. 

so as instructed, i take my bank statement, go to the nearest icici pru branch.. there are 2 execs sitting there, just abt on their way out to have what i think is a cup of tea at 330pm. one of them stays back.. (shes the hero of my story).  i explain the whole story to her and all she needed was my policy no to check on the status and straighten things out. she gave me a plain paper and told me to just write an application to reverse and voila it would be done. 

(now comes the delight part) the TAT for a reversal is 7-10 days with a DD coming in at ur postal address. i mentioned to her that, that was a long time and i needed the money faster if possible. (month end that yaar!! paise khatam ho gaye the.. :D) she asked me, if i had an  icici bank account and if i can get an ECS on the account and have a direct credit done into the account. TAT down to 4 days. music to my ears. the last formality was to fill the ECS form. of course as unprepared as i was, no cheque, no details. so she waited patiently till i got all my details in place and filled the form and gave it to her. in 4 days like she said, the money comes into my account.. :) 

learning: 

1) cc execs who know the systems are better at their jobs. knowledge comes from good training, transparent and logical systems and longitivity in the job.

2) a little patience and straight thinking can solve all the problems. this comes from a good state of mind and a sense of belonging to the company - called employee satisfaction.