Same company .... Same customer .... ????

Yesterday I received a call from a General Insurance company's agent for a health insurance policy. The policy did sound exciting. I told the agent that I like the coverage of the policy and will not purchase a policy over the telephone. I asked him to have someone visit me with the brochures and other documents on the policy so we can close the deal. The agent stated that he would like to close it over the telephone. After a few iterations of this interaction, finally I stated sternly that there is no use continuing the discussion as I am sure of not purchasing the policy over the telephone. The agent said that this was a "telecall offer" and hence he cannot arrange for someone to visit me.

This highligts a sorry state of affair. Probably, the campaign for telecalling was outsourced to the call center agency. Probably, the agent would not have got any commission for any lead generated. Probably, he gets credit only for sales made over the telecall.

We may have heard of product centric companies. In this case, it also seems we have channel-centric processes. Here is a company who managed to throw a line in the vast ocean of the population and were lucky to hit a confirmed prospect. Had they sent a representative to me today, they would have already have sold one policy by now. But the processes did not support this event to happen. In the process, the agents refusal to get someone to visit me have also put me off the company.

Things are so simple. Irrespective of the channel, the general insurance is the same company. Irrespective of the channel, the customer is the same person. So why is there a difference of interaction across channels. Why can't companies have processes that give the same experience irrespective of the channels? Why can't companies have the channels work in collaboration?