Customer
Spotlight
Customer
Spotlight
 TRIGON Blue Cross / Blue Shield |
| When Norwood Davis,
Chairman of the Board and CEO of Virginia's Trigon Blue
Cross Blue Shield, read A Complaint Is a Gift, Using Customer
Feedback as a Strategic Tool, by Janelle Barlow and Claus Moller, he
recognized it as "the best customer piece I have
ever seen."Trigon is a
service-oriented health care insurance company with 1.9
million customers and 4,000 employees. Davis wondered how
he could pass on the unique TMI approach to handling
customer complaints -- and he developed an ingenious
solution.Mr. Davis
sent a copy of A Complaint Is a Gift to 1,100 of
his front line staff and offered them an incentive of
$100 each to read the book. All they had to do was send a
short note to him listing 5 ideas they got and 3 ideas
they would implement after reading the book. Mr. Davis
heard back from 600 of his staff members. Some of Trigon
employees said they didn't feel they should be paid for
reading the book because they already got so much value
out of it.Phyllis
Berkle, Account Benefit Specialist at Trigon, said,
"I loved this book. Trigon has many of the concepts
already but there is always room for improvement. I
personally plan to make more call backs to customers when
I receive a written complaint. Mr. Davis should be
recognized for his great contributions to his internal
and external customers. I really wish I had had this book
earlier!!! Thank you for showing me that a complaint is
truly a gift!"Steve
Piersanti, president of Berrett-Koehler books, publisher
of A Complaint Is a Gift, says that he knows of no
other instance in which such an amount of money was spent
by a customer to encourage people to read a business book
his firm, or any other firm, has published. Norwood Davis
himself says that the $60,000 was money well spent. |
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