I was talking to my 81 year old father this week. He is in extremely great health for his age. He rides a Harley over 25,000 miles per year and just finished building a house. I just hope I have his genes. Anyway, he was telling me about closing on his new house with the builder who provided a one year warranty on the house. He made a statement that made me chuckle and then it made me think. He said “you know when you have a piece of paper and an 800 number, you don’t have much do you?” A contract and an 800# really doesn’t hold much weight does it?

As an independent life insurance broker I run into people quite often who think purchasing life insurance on the internet saves time and money. But they are just buying a contract and an 800# without using a life insurance broker they can call on. We, as life insurance brokers, do not cost one cent when helping the client, so they are not saving any money by not using us. They do sacrifice service by not using us. We, the broker, are the ones that will deal with the contract and an 800# instead of them wasting their time trying to get an answer to a question they may not even be sure they are asking correctly. The larger the company the worse the service.

I will stop picking on large insurance carriers. Take any large industry you would like, internet provider, cable provider, Telephone Company or practically any service you have to have falls in this category. They are not synonymous with good service. Recently I was changing my cable and internet provider and I was told to return the previous company’s equipment, which I was happy to do. This very large provider was sending me a special box to ship their equipment back to them in. Sounds easy enough doesn’t it? This was just the beginning of weeks of what could only be described as a really bad “Abbot and Costello” movie. First the box never showed up. Of course, they tell me “not our fault” must be the post office. So, I ask to just return it in person at the local office, they say “sure, go ahead”. After arriving at the local office, I stand in a very long line of very pissed off people with one customer service, oxymoron, representative helping scores of people, who obviously did not want to be there either. I had to surrender after one hour wasted and still several folks away from being helped. I drive away calling the 800# to try for another shipping box. At this time, I am told I am late returning equipment and may be subject to a penalty, “what?” So now I have to ask for a supervisor, who begins to tell me how bad their service is at returning equipment. Let me state that again. A customer service supervisor tells me how bad her company sucks. So, my 81 year old father was spot on when he said “you know when you have a piece of paper and an 800 number, you don’t have much do you?”

The moral of this story is simple. When given a choice between a small business or personal connection versus a large company, pick the smaller one every time and save yourself a lot of headaches. When you have a contract and an 800# you really don’t have much.

“Customer service is the new marketing.”—Derek Sivers

Image by Stuart Miles at www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Tim Wilhoit is owner/principal of Your Friend 4 Life Insurance Agency in Nashville, TN. He is a family man, father of 3, entrepreneur, insurance agent, life insurance broker, salesman, sales trainer, recruiter, public speaker, blogger and team leader with over 27 years of experience in sales and marketing in the insurance and beverage industries.