A small, but reoccurring annoyance

[Syriilord]

Hi all

Long time, no post. I know.

Brief Background:
After a long period of unemployment I managed to land myself a call center job doing customer care for private Health Insurance. A year and a quarter later and I haven't been driven completely insane yet.
End Background

I don't remember any major sucky customers (better for my sanity that way ) but this one issue keeps coming up.

If you are going to call your health insurance provider to query your health insurance policy, why oh why did it not occur to you to have some kind of detail about your health insurance policy so that we can find it on our system to answer your question?

Seriously, I would estimate about half my weekly calls begin like this:
Me: [Opening Spiel]
SC: Hi, I have a question about my health insurance
Me: Ok, can I get your policy reference or membership number?
SC: Oh, I don't have those with me
Me:


Actually, while I'm on the subject, listen to what I'm asking you. If I ask for your full name, please stop including your address as well. That just means that I have one fewer detail I can use for our mandatory security questions...

[MoonCat]

I totally get what you're saying. I always have my card with me when I call my insurance company. Weird thing is, all they ever ask me for is my birthdate. They always get my account up with just that, which is odd...I can't be the only person in the system with that date, can I?

[dalesys]

... my birthdate. They always get my account up with just that, which is odd...I can't be the only person in the system with that date, can I?

Did yo mama get the date from one of Argabarga's parking passes?

[mhkohne]

I totally get what you're saying. I always have my card with me when I call my insurance company. Weird thing is, all they ever ask me for is my birthdate. They always get my account up with just that, which is odd...I can't be the only person in the system with that date, can I?

Caller-id? The companies that are willing to invest in making their CS people more efficient (instead of just harrasing them with stupid metrics) will use caller it data to bring the customer file up on the agent's terminal when they connect the call. Agent can them move straight to verification.

[Syriilord]

That would make much more sense, wouldn't it. Unfortunately the powers that be don't usually make the sensible decisions...

[retro]

We used to do something similar with our caller ID service. It would automatically bring up an account holder name so we were told to use it from the off. "Hello Mr Jones, how can I help you?"

Yeah, that process lasted all but a week before someone pointed out it was in breach of the data protection act and the process was changed swiftly back.

[retro]

Exactly. I had ideas of someone stealing a mobile phone, calling us up and us calling them by name. Okay, it's one thing if it's Mr Jones, but another thing entirely if it's Mr Papadopolous-Chan (ie a very unique name).