So End of Day 1 of the Experiment

So i am pleased to see that actually in my absence from my computer during the day actions that i put in motion have generated some response.

I have new followers on the purpose created IF Social Experiment Twitter account. See the links on the blog which i have added on the right and i promise to add some more graphically pleasing links later ;-)

I have had the blog shared and twitted by others and very nicely i have also had a third party google + mention thanks @jukkan for that one. See Google + mention.

I have also pleasantly had a reply from IF via their own social media Facebook page where i also pasted a link to this blog. See related links on this blog.

"Hi Daniel! Thank you for your feedback. We'll check this case with If's claims handling specialists and we'll get back to you at the beginning of next week. Thank you for your patience!"

I must say i was very pleasantly surprised to get a reply on Saturday i did not expect that in Finland!!

So that is basically the news part over with. Generally i am quite happy with the progress. There has been some response from the social media community and also some from IF themselves. I am refusing to start to believe that anything positive will come from this in terms of overturning IF's decision. Mostly as i am not sure that i want to build up my hopes.

I want to believe in the power of social media but i am not sold yet. Perhaps if we had a 100 000 followers and the traditional media services started to pay attention then there would be real attention.

Is it enough just to post directly to a company's public social profile for all to see when you are just one voice or a few and when IF themselves only have 5000 odd members on their page of which perhaps 1% will be active and of those most will work for the company? Do they really care about the content that appears there?

When you consider that in Finland IF must have easily 200 000 customers (just guessing here). Are they prepared to tollerate bad publicity on their own pages? Will they just delete content that i post when they get tired of it? In which case my own social media is the channel that will preserve the conversation. If IF decide to remove my content from their pages then from time to time this story may continue to appear on their Facebook page as a continued pest to them (or is that just cruel and mean?)

In all honesty when they publish their response, and i hope that they do it publically, then i will be very surprised to see any change. I can say that the response i would normally expect would be that IF would stick to their current line and justification for none payment.

"Their Elisa agent did not promise to pay" But now i am using the magical social network so let's see.

I must note that it is surprisingly very clear to anyone who reads IF's terms and conditions (only availble in Finnish BTW) that

IF do not pay when a company goes bankrupt so in my mind a trained monkey should have been able to clearly say "sorry IF do not cover these costs when a company goes bankrupt".

If this message cannot be clearly communicated so that it is not misunderstood then should we as customers be responsible. Especially when we as consumers make decisions and act based upon what has been communicated. Let's see what IF think. To be continued...........

Let's Go Social

OK so we are up and running.

I have created a new twitter account: https://twitter.com/#!/IFInsurance @ifinsurance

Feel free to follow retweet and mention. I will use this to communicate new blog posts mainly and to try and generate interest at least in the Finnish social media community to start with.

I started by following IF and everyone who was following IF (there stakeholders) as well as people who are in the Finnish SCRM scene.

I have created a Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/groups/322104997840963/?profile_pic_upload=1&success=1#!/groups/322104997840963/ for anyone who wants to show support (or criticise actually), comment, give ideas and suggestions or to tell their own "hate" stories.

Most importantly i have posted onto IF's own Facebook and Twitter profiles.

As this is social media comment communicate whereever you want to, on the Blog, FB, Twitter on mine or IF's profiles.

Let's see what happens. Will IF respond? Will this experiment gain support in the social community. Can people really have power of these big faceless organisations or is it a myth?

Nothing ventured nothing gained :-)

I can't wait to find out.

n.b. i have also added all relevant links to the column on the right ;-)

Let's go to the Mattreses: My Social Strategy

Well all else has failed so what is the plan?

Briefly about Social CRM (customer relationship management) and social media. I understand that you are not all buffs on the subject nor want to be but in short with the creation and addition of social media technology and services such as Facebook and Twitter people are supposed to have been empowered and especially consumers.

Social CRM talks about companies engaging with customers and having a dialogue with them. It is of course going to be used as a marketing channel for companies but there should be a shift in the traffic of the conversation from one way like traditional advertising such as tv commercials to a more interactive and communicative strategy and style.

Customers should be able to get service on their terms and through the channels that they specify and not based upon what the service provider deams. Consumers are able to leverage the power of social media to receive outstanding service. This can be beneficial of course to the company and also when bad service is received can be negative.

The purpose of my social marketing strategy in this case is to achieve my goals.

1. Force IF to change their decision regarding my claim :-)
2. Prove that social media can be used in Finland to empower consumers more than before
3. At least cause some pain and embarass IF publically and damage their brand regarding their poor customer service if they do not respond positively to this type of customer support request
4. Highlight and warn stakeholders in Finland particularly about issues with IF insurances 
5. Create an internal stimulus for IF to improve their internal systems, process and products to meet consumer needs.

For a little bit of fun here is a story of how social media in conjunction with a good CRM system can be used well by a company.

http://shankman.com/the-best-customer-service-story-ever-told-starring-mortons-steakhouse/

Strategy:

1. Document the story: This blog is that :-)
2. Make IF aware of the story on their own social media where all their fans can see how it is handled.
• If facebook
• IF twitter
3. Try and gain support across the board  by communicating and utilising my own social media channels
• The truth about IF: Twitter account (number of followers is important as are retweets and mentions)
• This Blog (comments, tweets and likes)
• My own personal twitter/facebook account. (to get the ball rolling)

OK so that is it all i need to do now is apply this simple strategy and see what happens :-)

Very Quick Recap of Story Thus Far

For those who are too laxy to read the entire story thus far ;-)

Here is a recap and for you readers. I hope this is where the story starts to get more interesting and away from my rantings and consumer frustration and more towards social engagement. Let's see what happens.

1. Malev went bankrupt
2. We got trapped in Istanbul
3. Called IF Emergency number who promise to pay claim
• IF have outsourced this to a third party who do not have detailed knowledge of IF's policies
• IF do not take responsibility for this third parties actions
4. Make online Claim
• Online service sucks
5. Received Mail saying claim not to be paid.
6. Went to IF shop.
• IF shops only have customer service for Sales.
• IF customer support service in shops is by phone and did not work
7. Called IF to explain situation. If promise to listen to phone call and get back to us
• IF refuse to accept that the Elisa agent at least implied that IF would pay. They never say they will not pay.
8. I quit IF and have moved all my insurances over to Pohjola.
9. I decide to attempt to engage IF through social media as social CRM is supposed to empower the consumer and in short all else has failed. Let's see how succesful this is. There are lots of examples across the web but none i can find in Finland. See the next post for the plan :-)

The Last Straw and another channel Email

After the phone call IF promised to look into the situation and listen to the phone call which apparently had been recorded. 

In any case this is a translation of some of the text sent by IF and cut and pasted from my email.

"Elisa's customer service representative checked the Malev web pages and saw that they had said to use other airlines to get home."

"After this he has read to you insurance examples and terms and condtions."

"The Elisa representative advises you to pay yourself and then to make the claim afterwards".

I am sorry IF but we interpreted this as you will pay and based our behaviour upon this.

It seems to me that

IF do not take responsibility for their third party partners in critical positions.

This is absolutely discraceful and this is where i gave up on IF in the conventional channels. Hence this social media experiment was born out.

IF all else fails make a phone call!!!

Having failed to get any service from IF's web service or from their shop, or from their phone service which was unavailable we waited to the next day and tried to call their helpline.

Actually i should mention at this point that all phone conversation with IF took place in Finnish just in case you think that language may have been a problem here. And it was "REAL" Finnish not my semicoherent Finnish verbal diaharea. This is thanks to my girlfriend dealing with this :-)

Well in short the content of the phone call was as such. Again we were told:

IF do not pay travel insurance claims when companies go bankrupt.

but the lady asked when we had spoken to the agent so that they could attempt to verify the conversation. We passed this information along. With hope fading that anything would really happen.

Interestingly we were also told that

IF do not manage their emergency number themselves it has been outsourced to Elisa.

Even more alarmingly i thought how can someone who does not work for IF and is handling support for several companies at a time have a detailed enough knowledge of IF's policies so as to be able to give accurate advice. Something that obviously was not given to us. In the case of a real emergency with illness and/or large amounts of money involved would you want to have to trust this kind of service? What choice do you have even if you carry the terms and conditions arround with you? You have no other guarantee than the person on the end of the line that they will pay. In these situations you require a clear yes or no whether payment will be received and you need to be able to trust this.

Obviously based upon this you cannot trust IF's emergency service number!!

IF you want customer service don't bother come here

As previously mentioned we embarked on the arduous trip into downtown Helsinki in all sorts of freezing weather conditions and blizzards that are for Finns a normal part of daily being even in what i would deam Autumn or Spring.

Having succeeded in reaching the IF office we looked for the customary Finnish service process of taking a number and waiting in line. But wait, FANTASTIC we are the next number, there is no line!!

Having lived in Finland perhaps too long i should have been suspicious but me in my ever naive state just thought that we were lucky!

Well we sat down with the IF agent and within 10 seconds we knew why there was no line. IF offices only sell insurance. There is no "customer service". The if agents cannot even see the data related to the customer such as claim history or current status of claims.

As such we were directed to a phone where we could call their customer support. Nice touch i thought, well that is service. Guess what, the phone service was out of order!

To be fair the agent in the shop tried to help us the best that she could with the limited resources available to her.

As such we explained our story to her. In short we said that we had called the emergency number and that they had said that they would pay but then didn't.

She was clear on one point though. IF do not pay travel insurance claims when companies go bankrupt. This is as Malev did in our case.

I must say i found this very strange, i personally would think that this is one of the things that you would absolutely want insurance for. I guess it would be too expensive if a Finnish company like aurinkomatkat went bankrupt and they would have to fly 10 000 finns back from Phuket. That might actually affect their profitability ;-)

Again though even with this point clearly stated in the small print the agent assured us that as IF had promised to pay by phone when we were in Istanbul that they would probably honour that claim.

Again reassured, but now more than a little annoyed, tired but still hopeful we went home knowing that we would again need to try and make contact with IF again via their phone number as there was once again no info on their web service regarding the claim or how to contest it and we could not get service in their shop.

WTF Am i just bad at Finnish?

Well thus the plot thickens. About a week later i received through the post a large envelope from IF.

Me being me, my first thought was OMG not another bill! I am sure i only just paid the last one!!

Well it was not a bill it was "even with my Finnish ability" a refusal to pay the claim. Included in the envelope was a "large" attachment of all the "small" print that no-one reads.

Well of course you can imagine my shock having hopefully also read the previous posts in this blog. IF had agreed to pay and now were refusing. What was going on?

After having waited for my girlfriend to come home to confirm what my poor Finnish had already implied we decided of course to take this up with IF. The next day we went to visit IF's office in downtown Helsinki to see if we could get to the bottom of this.

Making the Travel Insurance Claim

In the beginning of February upon returning home and as instructed by IF's emergency phone agent we made the travel insurance claim.

I wont spend too much time on this point but OMG what a painful user experience that was. Seemed to be using a web service that looked and behaved like something from the stoneage or at least late 90's. With my poor English education i am not sure which came first ;-)

Anyway after the second attempt and after having their service crash i managed to submit which admittedly was a shortened version of the original claim. It was without the receipts as attachments because i could not figure out how or if it was possible to attach them to the message but it was done and i expected them to contact me for the other relevant info such as the receipts.

In any case i decided to sit back throw my arms in the air, wrap them around the back of  my head and relax. I had that nice warm feeling inside because i had been smart to enough to get travel insurance and that everything was going to be ok. The gamble had paid off.

The End of The Trip and Start of the Story

Most stories start at the beginning but this one starts at the end of a fantastic romantic weekend getaway to Istanbul with my Finnish girlfriend.

Upon arriving back at Istanbul's airport with the intention of returning to Helsinki, where we live, we immediately were greeting by the in itself unpleasant site of seeing that our flight had been cancelled. We took the usual steps of walking around the airport trying to find out information and eventually discovering that as Malev had gone bankrupt they would not be flying anyone home.

Of course the expected questions arrive, what are we supposed to do? what should we do, how are we going to do that?

As we could not get home that day we decided to go back to the hotel. Upon arrival at the hotel we thought it best to call IF's emergency number to see what we should do.

During the phone call we were led to believe that IF would pay for the return flights and additional night in the hotle as well as other costs. With this in mind we relaxed booked quite expensive flights the next day so that we could get home faster and checked back into our very nice hotel in Istanbul.

End of a lovely trip to Istanbul

With this in mind we simply relaxed and enjoyed what remained of an additional day in Istanbul, went to bed and returned to Finland the next day.

After returning home we made the travel insurance claim through IF's web service and this is where the plot began to thicken.