Situation

Most insurance organisation get requests or claims with the expectation that they will just pay the bill. Most often these claims get approved, sometimes it is disapproved. Which is just fine, since there is a certain process in place with certain criteria one should follow. However not everybody always agrees with the disapproval of a certain claim and these people ask the insurer to review the claim once again (most often leading to the same outcome, since the same criteria are used).

However sometimes people do not complain to the insurer in private, but on social media out in the open. In this case there was much havoc on social media, causing the insurer to re-evaluate the decision they made earlier and make a 180 degree turn and all of a sudden approving the treatment. Which was rather peculiar since there was complaint raised earlier in private which had no impact on the decision made earlier by the insurance company.

Analysis

If this is the behaviour you showcase then you train your customer that if they whine more, they get more. It shows that your processes are very random and that you have to appeal. If you appeal you know you might be lucky to have a different outcome than you had before. Also people see that if they move in large groups towards you, you are very likely to change any decisions made in the past into the favour of the opinion of the large group.

So basically everything you had in place as a process has become useless since you turn as a leaf as soon as big groups are moving towards you and now that people know that, they will do it more often. Resulting in that you recall decisions even more often or even change your process in something you didn’t want it to be, just for the sake of avoiding having an angry mob as your main audience.

In short: it is just a matter of time before you go bankrupt since people will be pushing the boundaries on every decision you have made in the past.

How to make it better.

It is not about treating your (potential) customer as king, it is about having a clear vision / view on what you do and what you don’t do and to be able to be 100% transparent on this. The main reason you created this business was not to become the popular kid in the class; insurers never are the popular ones, since you pay them a lot of money for nothing most of the time, since most often the anticipated risk just doesn’t happen. You created this business to help others in the time they need it most.

If you start using your customers as your number one guidance, meaning that you ignore your vision you had upfront, you might be getting an issue. Since most likely your customer would like to see that, in case your are an insurer, you pay more claims for their friends. Though they rather prefer not to have a tenfold increase in fees to make this happens. Either you are the bad guy if you cannot be transparent on this.

Therefore be transparent. Show what you want to do with your company, show how you are doing it and why you are doing it this way. However remember that it is your company and that even though there are many smart people outside your company you can ignore them if they do not fit the vision you have had with your company. If you treat your customer as king, you might end up as peon. The worst thing that might happen when being stubborn and transparent is that you might end up with the customers you deserve.