On Sept. 8, 2023, this website published an article I wrote titled, “The too-often neglected facet of PR: Good customer service—my personal experience with American Airlines.” The essay detailed my correspondence with American Airlines after I wrote AA about a terrible experience I had while waiting to board a flight from Miami to New York.
Even worse than my experience with American Airlines for terrible customer service, because it involves a person’s health, were my recent dealings with United HealthCare.
I don’t know where their customer service center is located, but it is often difficult to understand what the person on the other end of the line is saying. In addition, no one knew the answer to my simple question, when I called on Jan. 23, 2025. But people on the other end of the line insisted that they could help me. They couldn’t. After being transferred to several people, I was transferred to a “consumer advocate” who promised to look into the problem and call me back the following day.
I’m still waiting as I write this on March 10
I waited until Jan. 27 before calling again and asked to be connected directly to a supervisor, after refusing to go again through the time consuming and fruitless “can I help you” rigmarole I experienced on Jan. 23. I was connected to two people in the U.S. who didn’t know why the 90 day supply of the med that my doctor requested was reduced to a 30 day supply. They suggested that I put in for a 90 day supply again and see what happens and that if I have trouble understanding the person at the call center, I can request to be transferred to an individual in the U.S., which they must do.
But when I called to get information on Feb. 3, two representatives at the call center refused to transfer me to a person in the U.S., insisting that they can speak English, and it took a call from me to the corporate office in the U.S. before I was connected to an individual that I could understand. She reiterated that if I ever have trouble understanding the person in their offshore phone center, I can request to be transferred to someone stateside, and the request must be granted—but not in my experience.
My experience is not unique
United HealthCare has been receiving a lot of criticism regarding its customer service. A sweep of the internet on Feb. 27 revealed complaints ranging from waiting a long time to speak to someone to United reps not knowing answers to questions, to which I can attest. The most favorable comment about United’s customer relations service said that “it’s mediocre at best.”
The Dec. 13, 2024 edition of the New York Times ran an op-ed by Andrew Witty, chief executive officer of UnitedHealth Group, parent company of United Healthcare. The essay was titled, “United Health Group C.E.O.: The Health Care System Is Flawed. Let’s Fix It.”
The essay said, in part, “We know the health system does not work as well as it should, and we understand people’s frustrations with it. No one would design a system like the one we have. And no one did. It’s a patchwork built over decades. Our mission is to help make it work better.”
An easy start, Mr. Witty, would be to not hire people in foreign call centers whose English is difficult to understand, and often is impossible to understand, and who can’t answer simple, basic questions, like mine, without having to consistently transfer me to another person, who is also difficult to understand and also can’t answer a simple question, because they don’t know the answers.
“Why Is Customer Service So Bad? Because It’s Profitable,” was the headline of an article that appeared in the Harvard Business Review on Feb., 28, 2019.
Here is a summary of the article by Anthony Dukes and Yi Zhu:
“American consumers spend, on average, 13 hours per year in calling queues with an estimated monetary cost of $38 billion. A third of complaining customers must make two or more calls to resolve their complaint. And that ignores the portion who simply give up out of exasperation after the first call. So why is customer service still so bad? Part of the answer is that a subset of companies purposely make callers jump through hoops with the hope that they’ll simply give up. When this happens, the company saves money on redress costs. At first glance, this may seem problematic: what about customer retention and brand reputation? Research shows that companies with a large market share—think airlines, cable, and internet services—can get away with bad practices because customers have nowhere else to go. This may help us understand why some of the most hated companies in America are so profitable”.
In this year’s Feb, 26 edition, The Wall Street Journal published an article under the headline, “Senator Looks Into UnitedHealth’s Medicare Billing Practices.” The senator is Chuck Grassley. I don’t know him and certainly don’t agree with him on most political issues. But, as a caring human being, for his sake, if it results in a Congressional hearing, I hope that none of those testifying are from United’s off-shore consumer calling center.
Customer Relations Is Public Relations
Some readers of this essay might wonder what it has to do with public relations. My answer is “everything.” Because it demonstrates the inability of PR people to prevent media stories about customer unhappiness from being covered, as well as other negative stories about clients that are published daily despite the best efforts of crisis communications “experts.”
When I taught public relations at the U.S. Army public relations school, we had to make certain that students understood that the Army was not to use propaganda against the American public.
That’s a rule ignored by American civilian public relations (and advertising) firms. The use of propaganda against Americans are a staple of public relations. It is also used against new hires, who are told “we can do anything,” only to learn that they can’t.
I can think of no way better to end this essay than to quote a few lines from Joel Stein’s Feb. 22-23 humorous, but serious article in the Wall Street Journal titled, “How to Not Pay Your Medical Bills:”
Describing his conversation with the chief medical officer of a lab after receiving a bill after a year, Mr. Stein wrote “…Clarke suggests that patients save their angry calls for the huge corporations in no danger of filing for Chapter 11, the ones who don’t even provide medical services: health insurance companies. I told him that while I was tempted by the prospect of spending three hours being transferred around Blue Shield and then ignored, it didn’t sound nearly as satisfying as screaming at his billing department.”
Thank you, Mr. Stein.
