Week 3 EOC - Great Customer Service

    It was the Tuesday after Memorial Day weekend. I remember this day because it was the day my 15 year old cat died. I was so upset while I was cleaning the house, that I hardly heard the banging in the ceiling. At first I thought it was my other cat, because she often spent time in the ceiling. But as the sound got louder and harder I looked out the window and the hail was coming down bigger then golf balls. It broke through all the windows on the south side of the house as it thundered down for about what seemed like an eternity but was really only about 10 minutes.
    I do not think I had ever been this terrified in my life. I was waiting for the roof to get torn off by a tornado like what you see in a movie. After it died down I called my husband, who was on his reserve weekend in Louisiana, telling him he had to come home NOW!! Of course, he could not. I called the police because I did not know what exactly was going on and what to do. They told me that there was a tornado warning for the next couple of hours. They said the safest place to go is into the bathtub if anything else happened. The unfortunate part of that is that my husband had recently replaced the bathtub with a glass enclosed shower stall. I was living in New Mexico where nobody had a basement because, according to the real estate agent, New Mexico does not have tornados. The only other thing I could think of was to call my insurance company.
    I had no idea what I was supposed to do and I was still terrified. The customer service person, Nancy, was the greatest, most caring person. The first thing Nancy did was she made sure that I was all right and not in any immediate danger. Then she talked me down from being terrified. She had me go around the house and tell her everything that had been damaged. Her patience and concern made all the difference in the world to me that day. By the end of our conversation I had thought I was talking to a good friend.
    When I called the insurance company I was expecting someone to give me a list of things I had to do. I thought they would take whatever information they needed and then wish me good luck. I think I received such great service because Nancy knew to ask the right questions and she had empowerment to make certain decisions. She never once had to put me on hold to ask another person what to do. This insurance company has a societal marketing orientation; they do not just sell insurance they care about their customer's well being. They have niche competitive advantage. Their target is military personnel and their families and because of this, they can effectively serve a small segment of the market. This made me feel like I mattered. I was the only person on Nancy's mind at that moment and she was going to make sure that I had everything that I needed and that I was all right before she got off the phone with me.
    Within two days of talking with Nancy, an inspector came to the house. We had over $19,000 dollars worth of damage to the house and my car. While other insurance companies were giving their customers a hard time about covering this or that because the storm was classified as a micro blast and not a tornado, we had a check in the mail in a week and were already repairing our house