Posts Tagged ‘upset customers’

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ComcastCares fixes only some of the problem

November 23, 2009

Back in the late 1980s, I read a story about how Chrysler was offering the longest and most thorough warrantee in the automobile business. It was an attempt to compete with the Japanese who had a better reputation for quality than did American cars.

The reporter who wrote the story took the initiative to call the CEO of a leading Japanese automaker and asked if they would match the warrantee. The CEO said, “No.” When asked why, he replied, “Our cars don’t break.”

The CEO was really saying, “If your car is in the shop all the time, who cares how good the warrantee is?” It’s not that the Toyotas or Hondas at the time were unbreakable; they just didn’t have as many problems as the American cars did. And if your product has problems, it doesn’t matter how many miles the warrantee covers or how polite or nice your customer service representatives are. And if you start a new customer service initiative based on talking to people on Twitter or other social media, it’s never going to be enough if your product is lousy or if the bulk of your customer service inquiries go to a place where problems aren’t solved.

Comcast has been getting a lot of great publicity because of its Twitter program, ComcastCares, with which it keeps in touch with its customers who have problems. It’s a great initiative, but it doesn’t solve its service problems. I recently called Comcast about a situation. I got the IVR, punched the right prompt, was told (by the recording) that they were transferring me, and immediately got a busy signal. Tried five minutes later, five minutes after that, ten minutes after that and got the same busy signal. Finally, I tweeted about my situation.

About 15 minutes later, I went out to eat, shutting down my computer. When I came home, we tried Comcast again and this time, spoke to somebody who fixed the issue. When I went back online, there was a message from ComcastCares saying, “I’m so sorry you’re having trouble. How can I help?”

That’s very nice. And I’m happy Comcast is trying.  Sadly, Comcast (and sadly, other cable companies) have a reputation for lousy service that is well-deserved. As I travel from city to city giving customer service seminars, I continually hear horror stories about technicians who arrive with the wrong service order, incorrect bills, refunds that are never issued, installers who have to come back because they had two boxes when they needed three, and a plethora of problems with CSRs who don’t know what they’re doing. Personally, I had one experience with a CSR who couldn’t figure out the problem and wanted to send in a technician when I had already figured out the problem was on their end. I spent 10 minutes trying to convince her that they could fix the problem through the signal box but she wasn’t buying it. Eventually, she sent me to a supervisor, who agreed with my diagnosis and fixed the issue.

It’s not just Comcast, but all Cable companies. What is it about that industry that facilitates this kind of anger and frustration? Clearly, there is a remnant of a time when Cable TV companies had no competition or perhaps they don’t see the satellite companies as competition. Or maybe they just don’t care.

In my customer experience seminars, I teach that there are two types of problems in customer service: people issues and system issues. Bravo to Comcast for doing something with social media to connect with customers. That works on the people issues. Now, they (and other Cable companies) should reconnect internally to figure out how to how to fix the system issues that are the main cause of its poor reputation for service.

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Facebook Violates the Basic Rules of Serving Customers

October 26, 2009

Facebook users were surprised this weekend to find that their Facebook news feed had changed. It wasn’t just a cosmetic change, it was a complete change in the way Facebook users get their information from their “friends.”

The change left users completely confused and baffled about why Facebook made this overwhelming change. In short, Facebook took the old “News Feed,” which is where Facebook users got their information, and split it in two – a “Live Feed” and a “News Feed”.

The Live Feed now details every post your “friends” put on Facebook, including some information that was never on the News Feed before, like who your “friends” are “friending.” The News Feed, according to Facebook “Aggregates the most interesting content that your friends are posting” Facebook decides what’s most interesting through an “algorithm (that) bases this on a few factors: how many friends are commenting on a certain piece of content, who posted the content, and what type of content it is (e.g. photo, video, or status update).” In this case, algorithm means “technical stuff you’ll never understand so trust us.” Some of your friends’ posts are on both, some are on only one with no rhyme or reason why.

So Facebook users spent the weekend into Monday trying to figure out how to manipulate the home page so that they can get something close to what they used to get from Facebook (Facebook said they changed everything due to “user input.” Really?). And by the end of Monday, many of us had found a way to get around the changes.

Facebook violated several rules of outstanding customer service and relationships:

1)      It didn’t tell users the change was coming. People like to be prepared for change, and Facebook ignored that. Oh yes, I now know that in the techie community it was known Facebook was making a change, but most users didn’t know.

2)      They didn’t clearly explain the reason for the change. The page just changed in the middle of the day leaving users saying, “Huh? What is this?”

3)      They confused their customers. As a writer once said, “If the reader doesn’t understand what you’re writing, it’s not the reader’s fault, it’s yours.” We are still confused.

4)      They didn’t know their audience. They did not take into consideration that the fastest growing part of their audience are people over the age of 40. We don’t have time to figure Facebook out. It’s fun. It’s enjoyable. We like connecting. I’m just trying to imagine how my 80-year-old mother, who just goes on Facebook to keep up with her children and grandchildren, is going to figure this out. What if they decide my comments aren’t important enough to land on her “News Feed?”

5)      They didn’t keep it simple. Which feed should I read, the News Feed or the Live Feed? Where are my kids’ pictures? Oh, they’re on the News Feed. Wait, no they’re not. They’re on the Live Feed. No, they’re on both.

6)      They made their customers work unnecessarily. As I teach in my customer service seminar, customers sometimes have to help, but most times, try not to make the customer do any work they don’t need to do. I shouldn’t have to feel triumphant because my niece told me how to get around the new system and I even improved on her instructions.

As companies grow, there is a tendency towards arrogance. Facebook is growing in leaps and bounds and its leadership is already saying it’s going to change the way we all communicate. Making changes that are confusing is no way to communicate.

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Customer Service Hero: Lori Ray, Olympus America, Ltd

October 14, 2009

Lori Ray, customer service representative for Olympus America saved my day. For that, I have named her a Customer Service Hero.

I had just finished recording a client’s words for a writing project I’m working on and went to transfer the remarks from my Olympus VN-4100PC digital voice recorder to my PC. The Olympus Digital Wave Player showed it recognized the recorder but was being very stubborn about transferring the files.

I checked out the recorder’s manual and found nothing. I even looked under “troubleshooting” because I was in trouble, though when I didn’t find my answer, I thought of shooting something else other than trouble. When a telephone number for customer service was not immediately findable on the Olympus website, I began to feel like someone dropped in the middle of a strange city without knowing how to get out. As the sweat began to appear on my brow, I found a number and called it. The voice recording indicated I had called Olympus Imaging products (Cameras) and I hung up. I rechecked the number and though it was the same, I tried it again. This time I stayed on long enough to hear the prompt for voice recorders.

Lori answered the phone and demonstrated everything I teach in my customer service course. She answered with a pleasant greeting and expressed a desire to help me. She asked me what the situation was and when I told her about the frustration of seeing that the software recognized my device but refused to transfer the files, she replied with an attitude of “Well, let’s see what we can do about that.”

Though I thought I must be missing something myself, she never made me feel like I was technically ignorant. She asked me several questions and had me repeat the various steps I had taken before I called her. The way she asked made me feel as if she was feeling the same frustration as I was, but she was going to figure it out no matter what. Her voice never showed the frustration but did show empathy. It probably helped that I remained calm, but I think she would have remained calm in any case.

Lori stayed on the phone with me for an hour (or so it seemed), tried this, tried that, and then, unlike so many others, she actually asked me if she could put me on hold and went to check with someone else. She made the conversation totally about me. She had asked what version of the software I had and apparently, there had been an update to solve the problem.

While she was telling me about the update, she was writing an email with links to the software and the update. She could have had me go to the Olympus website, navigate through the pages and find it myself. But no, she sent me the link while she was explaining so that when she got finished, the link was there for me to use.

I uninstalled the old software as she said and downloaded the new software and the patch. When my computer took a long time to shut down and reboot, I apologized and she assured me it was no problem (twice). After I rebooted, she had me reconnect my recorder, which opened the new software. Then she told me to try to transfer the files again and it worked.

Then she again exceeded my expectations while the files transferred. Apparently, I still had quite a few files on the recorder from previous uses and it was taking quite a while to transfer. Suddenly, I realized there was probably no reason for her to stay on the phone with me and offered to allow her to call me back after the transfer. She commented, “I probably won’t be here.” I looked at the clock and saw it was just after 5:00, but she had given me no indication that she wouldn’t have stayed with me for the duration. Finally, we agreed that I would email her when I saw it was alright. And it was.

In my customer service class, we show a video with a character, Maria, who does everything right. Some of the people in the class tell me Maria is “too perfect.” I ask, “Are there people who do what she does?” and they sheepishly say yes. After working with Lori Ray, our Customer Service Hero, I can honestly say I have met Maria in real life.  She is a customer service hero.

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You don’t have to say “NO!”

October 8, 2009

Nothing bugs me more than watching an employee make a customer angrier than he has to be. Why would they do this?

Customers are often talking to you in a state of increased agitation. They’re upset and they want satisfaction, but so often, if we find we can’t do what the customer wants us to do, we say the word guaranteed to increase the agitation: NO!

Even when the answer is no, we need to make sure that “no” is the only answer we can give before we say it. We may not be able to do what they want us to do, but often, something other than what they’re asking for will do. But we can’t find out unless we ask some questions.

For instance, I was working with the employees of an institution of higher learning. In the class were people who worked in virtually every department at the college: registrar, bursar, counseling, guidance, writing center, library, financial aid, office of the dean of students, etc. I asked them if there were times they have to say no to a student. An employee of the financial aid office said, “When a student has gotten all of the financial aid available to him from the school and wants more, whether in straight assistance or loans.”

I clarified that the student had taken out student loans and received some minor scholarships but there was still a good amount left on his tuition and fees. Then I asked a non-question question, “So, by taking out all of those loans and receiving those scholarships, he had exhausted what the college could do for him.”

“Correct,” she said, with all the certainty of a woman who had been asked if the sky was blue on a clear day. “What does the student want?” I asked.

The class participants were puzzled. I heard the words, “More financial aid” from several people, but it was muted. So I asked again, “what does the student want?”

A brave soul called out, “More financial aid!” So I asked, “How can we help him get more financial aid?” They looked at me like I had four heads. I repeated the question.

A woman in the back of the room said sheepishly, “By telling him about other scholarships and aid that may be available to him from other sources.” Yes, the school was not the only source of aid. There was a whole community out there to provide financial assistance.

“So what question or questions could we ask him to find out if he wants to go that route?”

They quickly volunteered such questions as, “Have you considered looking in other places for scholarship money?” “Do your parents belong to a union from which you may be able to get a scholarship?” “What service organizations do you or your parents belong to?” “Do you have a disability that might qualify you for more money?” and so on. It was amazing the amount of questions and possibilities that broke loose when they pulled away from the idea that the only thing they could do for this student was provide assistance directly from the college or traditional government loan sources.

You and your business have your own similar situations. If you think you have to say no, seek out ways to avoid doing so and find alternatives to what the customer requested.

I’m not saying you should never say no to a customer. There are times when no is the only answer. In those cases, we let the chips fall where they may. However, if this process can reduce the number of times you have to say no by even 40%, you will have less angry or upset customers and less need to deal with all the grief they bring you.

Customers have good intentions most of the time. They just want to get something done. They have a problem, they want you to solve it, and if you do, they’re happy. They can be like children and stomp around, especially when you tell them “no”. Like children, if they can’t have the toy they want, perhaps they’ll settle for a Tootsie Roll. In any case, the more you can find a way to make them the least bit happy, the better the customer will feel about you and your company, and the happier and calmer you will be.

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Don’t make employees deal with stupid rules

September 8, 2009

People in my customer service classes always ask me, “What makes customers so angry?” Here’s an example.

According to the New York Times, flyers on some recent flights have been told they cannot place any items in the seatback facing their seat. When asked why, flight attendants have blamed the FAA for the rule, which seemed strange since nobody had ever run into this rule before, especially on the same airline.  After numerous inquiries, the FAA admitted that when an airline enforces such a rule, it is following FAA guidelines from a 2007 directive on cabin safety.  Most airlines contacted by the Times said they weren’t aware of the ban, with one United Airlines spokesperson saying, “The seatbacks are absolutely there to be used for personal items.”

Why would this bother customers? One, because the rule doesn’t make any sense.  Frequent flyers had never heard of such a thing and had been using the seatback to hold books, newspapers, and other items forever. To our knowledge, no item ever went flying out of a seatback, hit a pilot in the back of the head and caused the plane to crash. And a hijacker isn’t going to grab my copy of Newsweek and threaten a flight attendant with it.  Two, because flyers already are feeling more and more helpless being told they have to pay to check items, having no overhead room to store items they want to take on board, and being asked to take off their shoes when they go through security.  Now they can’t use the seatbacks. Third, and last, the FAA admitted it has such a directive, but didn’t say why.

It’s enough to make you scream – at the next airline employee you see.  I feel for the airline employee who has to take the brunt of a stupid rule.

One of the things I’m always sharing with my audiences is how companies (and government agencies) make rules that affect employees and customers and don’t explain why they came up with the rule. First, companies come up with the rule without asking whether it makes any sense at all or asking what impact it will have on the customer experience. The rule is not vetted to any great extent before it is foisted upon the employees who have to enforce it.  The managers have to tell employees about the new rule without having a good explanation, so they take an attitude of “Hey, they told me we have to (or can’t) do this. I’m just telling you what they said.”

The person who the rule affects most is the customer. And the person with whom the customer has most contact is the customer-facing employee. The customer-facing employee is given the responsibility to enforce the new rule, not knowing what to say to the customer who asks “why?” Then the customer gets upset, screams at the employee, who feels betrayed by her boss who didn’t give her the tools to make the customer happy.  The employee has lost any connection to the company she works for, argues with the customer and drives him away.

Who doesn’t feel the effect of this problem? The person, department, or agency that made the rule. They just go on their merry way thinking of new rules that make customers angry and drive customer-facing employees to treat customers poorly, go through the motions, or quit, both figuratively and literally. And who can blame them?

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Social media should terrify you and your business

August 19, 2009

Chew on this – “80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices … people update anywhere, anytime …imagine what that means for bad customer experiences.” (www.socialnomics.com)

Now, remember the last time you got really angry about something and were so glad later on that nobody was around to see you lose control. Then, ponder the above statistic again and think about all the people who will tell everyone who follows them on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and everything else that they had a horrible experience, way before they calm down.

Now, imagine that the name of the company or person they are texting, posting, or talking about is you. If you don’t find this terrifying, you must be awfully customer-centric or you’re fooling yourself.

The idea that people will post their anger about their customer experience while it is still happening is terrifying. How many times have we had to deal with the wrath of an angry customer who contacts us or our call center and lets loose with high-octane screaming and frustration about what happened? The only person who knows about that extreme anger is the CSR or other employee who is talking to them. Also, if we fixed the situation, their stories to friends about the incidents would be tempered by time and would include a happy ending.

The worst time to have somebody complain about your product or customer service is when the anger and frustration is still white-hot. And today, using social media to tell others about their anger is equivalent to somebody standing in the middle of your office or store and calling everybody they know to complain. In the old days, the anger might have calmed down by the time they got to the tenth person. Now, they can tell thousands (My daughter, Hannah, has 590 “friends” on Facebook. If Hannah complains about your product, 590 people hear about it instantly. Terrifying).

Even if they cool off a little, the customer you just ticked off may be one of the 200,000,000 bloggers out there. And statistics show that 54% of these bloggers post new information daily and 35% of bloggers post their opinions about products, services and companies.

What can we do about this?

  • Make a firm commitment to become customer-centric by implementing new procedures, systems and processes where the customer is the most important person in the conversation or the process. If you’re not sure how to do this, here are two books you can start with: Passionate & Profitable: Why customer strategies fail and 10 steps to do them right by Lior Arussy and The Best Service is No Service: How to liberate your customers from customer service, keep them happy & control costs by Bill Price & David Jaffe.
  • Make a major effort to map your customer processes. Identify the dozens, if not hundreds of touch points where your company touches the customer in any way (even those where the department or person doesn’t touch the customer directly). Identify which are most important and find out where you need the most improvement by talking to your customers. If you can’t do the surveying yourself, hire somebody (Arussy’s Strativity Group is a great consultant on these issues)
  • Get on Twitter NOW and set up a way for your customers to reach you there.
  • Train, train, train your customer-facing people in techniques to diffuse situations when they are in the white-hot stage. A calm customer with a problem is less likely to tell the world than an angry customer with a problem.

People now trust their peer’s recommendations over advertising by a factor of more than five-to-one. You should be terrified.

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Survey says: Great customer experiences are more profitable

August 10, 2009

For 14 years, I’ve been preaching the benefits of creating outstanding customer experiences. The companies I work with seem to understand on an emotional level that better customer experiences bring loyalty from customers. But then they ask, “What is loyalty? What does it mean?” Behind those questions is skepticism that there isn’t really much to the whole concept. I’ve heard the line, “Our customers only care about price and they’ll remain loyal as long as our prices remain low” more often than I can count. In this economy, I’m hearing it more often than ever.

Now comes the 2009 Customer Experience Consumer Study from Strativity Group, Inc.  (http://bit.ly/GVH8I) which backs up the emotional understanding of exceptional customer experiences with one based on consumer opinions of their own experiences.  Based on surveys of 1,994 consumers, Strativity found that “Consumers … indicated they penalize companies that fail to deliver the desired experiences either by demanding discounted prices or by terminating their relationship altogether.”  The numbers show that:

  • 52% of unhappy customers say they will continue doing business with the company that made them unhappy only if it offers a discount of 5% or more. When we make customers unhappy, they want something in return.
  • Even in today’s difficult economic times, 40% of loyal customers (customers significantly happy with their customer experiences) are willing to pay an additional 10% or more to continue purchasing from the companies delivering great experiences. And while the study says only 9% of unhappy customers are willing to pay more, I see it this way: 91% of customers who are continuing to do business with you even though you’re not making them happy will bolt for the door if you raise your prices for any reason.

The study also notes that exceptional customer experiences result in significantly lower customer attrition. According to the report, “Loyal customers with exceptional customer experiences are almost three times as likely to continue doing business with companies for another ten years or more than the dissatisfied customers.” In addition, “Customers who received an inferior customer experience are ten times more likely to cease doing business with companies within the next 12 months than loyal customers.”

What does all of it mean? As Strativity puts it, “consumers want the maximum value rather than the lowest price.” If exceptional customer experiences are not among your competitive differentiators, you’re going to find yourself losing customers or selling your products and services at a lower price than you would like. In this economy, when revenues are down significantly already, can you afford to charge one penny less for your goods and services than you should? Deliver exceptional customer experiences and you not only won’t have to, you’ll probably be able to charge more.

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The Gates/Crowley incident has lessons for customer service

July 28, 2009

Was there a lesson in the interaction between Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley in Cambridge, Massachusetts? Yes, but not the one you think there was.

I don’t know what really happened there. There is the officer’s side of the story and there is Gates’. There is the screaming by those who feel the incident was racial and those who believe that the Sgt. Crowley is the victim of reverse racism, and that people are impugning a good man. I’m not going to comment on either of those accusations, because I wasn’t there.

But I do know one thing: the Gates/Crowley story has a big lesson for those of us who deal with customers, employees, or children. That lesson is: with authority comes responsibility not to use that authority unless it’s absolutely needed. I’ve learned that lesson over and over, from my child psychology professor, from baseball umpires and from watching customer service people turn disappointed and upset customers into raving lunatics.

As a big baseball fan, I can never understand why umpires yell back at players and managers when those players and managers yell at them.  The umpire has all the power. He made his decision and all the arguing and yelling in the world isn’t going to change that. If the umpire has had enough of the manager or player’s behavior, he can throw them out of the game. He never has to say a word except the “strike”, “ball”, “safe”, or “out” call he’s already made. There’s no reason to yell back.

What is the umpire trying to prove when he yells? I suppose he’s trying to show that he is the authority on the field and nobody is going to talk to him that way. But he’s already the authority on the field. He doesn’t have to say anything. With the authority comes the responsibility not to use it. When the umpire yells, he only makes matters worse and gets the manager or player angrier.

I’ve seen this with customer service people too.  The frustrated customer, having spoken with five people already, blows her stack and takes it out on the poor service person. The service person says in a stern tone, “Please don’t talk to me like that or I will hang up (or get security, etc.)” When the customer gets more upset because nobody seems to want to help her, she yells some more. At that point, the employee yells back, puts her on hold (forever) or hangs up. This only exacerbates the situation.

The service person has all the authority. She can be nice or nasty. She can fix the situation or not. She can get help from a supervisor or solve the problem herself. Just because the customer is angry doesn’t make it okay for the service rep to get down in the dirt with her. As I say to my class participants, “they’re not getting paid to be nice and patient. You are.”

The same goes for supervisors and parents of young children. The parent has all the authority—as does a police officer.

Once Sgt. Crowley ascertained that Professor Gates was in his own house, he should have excused himself and walked away – no apology needed. It didn’t matter whether the professor was screaming and yelling like a maniac or not. The sergeant had all the authority. With authority comes the responsibility not to use it when it’s not absolutely necessary.

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Difficult customers aren’t difficult people

July 23, 2009

She wasn’t a ticking time bomb when she first called your company or entered the store. She just wanted somebody to help. She may have prided herself as someone who was calm in a crisis, an understanding friend who gives people the benefit of the doubt. She’s was one of those people who put bonus introductory points in your experience bank account just for meeting you. She had “nice” written all over her face and then it all became too difficult. She was helpless.

Difficult customers aren’t difficult people. The reverse may be true, but a huge majority of your customers are not difficult people to start with. They just want something done.

Now, there are those who say that we should determine who our difficult customers are and jettison them from our client lists. I agree. Some customers eat up our time and resources and use up more resources than their business with us should provide. Sure, let ‘em go. Focus on your best customers.

Still, before we do that, let’s make sure that these customers aren’t being difficult for a good reason. I spoke to 15 different call center reps from my DSL provider in a one-month period because they continually provided me with reasons to call. First, the internet was not working for three days. Then, the new modem they put in my house had a weak signal to the upper floors, much weaker than the old, supposedly inefficient modem had. After they fixed that, they couldn’t figure out why my networking wasn’t working. When I thought I had finally solved all the problems, my internet started shutting down every 15 minutes, coming back up and then going down again. Finally, following all my difficulty, I received my regular monthly bill, only to notice they had double-billed me for the month.

As I said, I spoke to at least 15 different CSRs. Was it my fault that I had to call that often? And, even though I’m a pretty reasonable guy, can you blame me for my involuntary sarcasm and firmness when I called again and again? However, the statistics would put me in the “difficult” category.

Before we write off our “difficult” customers, let’s make sure they really are difficult. Most often, they’re not.

Treat customers with empathy. Show them you care. Let them know right off the bat that you are there for them, that this customers is the most important person in the room or on the phone. Listen to them. Try to find a way to fix the problem, even if you have to go around the rules.

The customer who is being difficult has more than likely been shuttled around before she got to you. It’s not about you. It may be about the last person she spoke with. It may be about the product not working even though she thought it was fixed. It may be about a change in the policy they didn’t know about. It may be that they’re just having a bad day. The last person it’s about is you.

Difficult customers aren’t difficult people. They just become that way when they feel helpless. Help them.

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I’m not an “eye.” I’m a person.

June 22, 2009

If you read or watch the news these days, you’ll hear much debate and scenarios over the cost and practice of healthcare in the United States. We hear about a trillion-dollar price tag and long lines if we get a public option in the healthcare arena. I’m not going to get into the politics of it all, but there’s one thing that can improve care without taking sides in the current debate – personal, practical, and human care.

Treating patients as individuals doesn’t cost trillions of dollars. Showing empathy has nothing to do with who is paying for healthcare. Listening to patients can take place in the examining room, the waiting area, the hospital room, or on a line in an emergency room. Looking at a patient as a patient and not as the total of her symptoms cannot be found on a balance sheet.

Working with a major healthcare system recently, a woman said to me, “Oh let me tell you a story about what happened to me! I had just had eye surgery and went to see the surgeon a couple of weeks after the surgery for a checkup.  After the medical assistant had brought me into the examining room and sat me at a table, the doctor walked in. He walked right over to me, bent down and looked straight into my repaired eye. He never said hello or ‘how are you feeling?’. He just looked at my eye, twisting his head from right to left and up and down. Then, after he finished, he spoke to me. Why would a doctor do that?” I answered, “Because you were an ‘eye.’ You weren’t a person. You were your operation. In his eyes, he operated on your eye, not on you. You just happened to be attached to your eye. It was the eye he cared about, not you.”

This also happens in our healthcare insurance companies – focus on the procedure and not on the person. A number of years ago, my daughter needed jaw surgery. We found out she needed surgery sometime in March. The doctor, who saw my daughter as the young adolescent she was, offered that he would arrange the surgery for sometime in June, so she would be over the surgery by the time she went back to school in August. Middle school students can be cruel, especially when your jaw is wired shut and you can’t talk or eat properly.

The insurance company had no such concerns. Despite our begging them to speed up the approval process (which shouldn’t have taken that long), they took their time, finally approving my daughter’s surgery for early August, leaving her to begin the 8th grade year with a wired jaw and all that went with it. My daughter is now 24 years old but she talks about the pain of that experience (not from the jaw) as if it were yesterday.

Patients are people first. A person’s health is the most personal thing they have. They are vulnerable and scared. They are not the sum total of their symptoms. They are the sum total of their emotions, wants, needs, desires, and their symptoms. It doesn’t cost trillions of dollars to treat them that way.

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