Client success story: don’t let the rules prevent you from meeting customer needs

The power of flexibility in meeting customer needs cannot be overstated. Sometimes, serving customers requires us to go beyond the rule book. This is how we did it.Last September, Sandra called us to advise that she was giving her car to her son.Having received the car in October, her son got a temporary slip as proof of insurance.The MTO completed the ownership transfer by December.However, Sandra’s renewal is in November and she thought there was nothing else she needed to do after giving the car away. But the insurer continued billing her and ended up cancelling her policy this spring for non-payment.By April, her insurer was sending her letters demanding a payment. What’s worse, a collection agency was also contacting her. Alarmed, her first response was calling TSG.We got into communication with Sandra and her son to determine the exact timeline for the ownership transfer and all their policy details. As it turned out, Sandra’s son had sold the car.He sent us proof of insurance and a copy of the ownership documents that showed the December transfer.We requested the insurer backdate Sandra’s policy cancellation for October. Although Sandra would have faced an early cancellation fee in that case, it wasn’t burdensome for her and she was happy to end the ordeal with the collections agency that was damaging her credit rating at this point.But there was still a catch: if the insurer was to backdate the cancellation to December, Sandra would still be required to make her November payment which made no sense because she didn’t have the car and had not been driving. The insurer argued they wanted to do December because that’s when the ownership transferred.We suggested a compromise wherein they would cancel the policy effective on Sandra’s renewal in November. It helped once we demonstrated that Sandra had been a good client for the insurance company: she had been a loyal customer for many years, she had no claims and made her payments on time, plus her driving record was excellent.Given how well she had treated the insurer over the years, it was the right thing for them to treat her likewise.The insurer agreed with our reasoning and backdated the cancellation to October to when Sandra had originally given her car to her son. They also issued her a refund for the extra fees charged after the transfer.Even if we had been unable to prove the cancellation occurred in October, we took a stand for Sandra and continued negotiating with the insurer to find a compromise. Although insurance rules typically would not have allowed this cancellation, sometimes we need to be flexible to get customers what they need.We want to know if your broker is being flexible to meet your needs. Give us a call if you feel like you should be getting more.