Aviva appalling customer service in the UK...you need to be aware

cogito

Aviva_company_representative wrote: »

amsquared

I'm sorry that you had that experience and I will certainly pass on your feedback, we do try to listen to any feedback we get.

Thanks
Becca
(formerly Beccus)

.........and then totally disregard it because Aviva spend all their time looking in on themselves instead of out to the people who use their services. It's not just Aviva unfortunately.

dacouch

cogito wrote: »

.........and then totally disregard it because Aviva spend all their time looking in on themselves instead of out to the people who use their services. It's not just Aviva unfortunately.

But Aviva are the pros at it.

I worked at a direct company many many years ago, they had a department for "Blue Sky Thinking". The CS department had a 3 week backlog of post so the BST dept spent a month looking into how to reduce it. The only thing they came back with was that they would rename the post back log to a "Post Tail" as it sounded better to customers and was less demoralising for the staff.

The team leaders had targets linked to bonuses for reducing the Post Tail, one of them came up with the ingenious way of reducing it (Unofficially) by throwing large amounts of it away. It reduced the back log and he got his bonus.

P.S Beccus talk is cheap especially if it is to a voice activated telephonist machine

amsquared

Aviva_company_representative wrote: »

amsquared

I'm sorry that you had that experience and I will certainly pass on your feedback, we do try to listen to any feedback we get.

Thanks
Becca
(formerly Beccus)

I hope you do more than "try to listen" - I hope you actually take action and convince your senior managers to abandon the voice recognition solution. If it helps I'd be happy to come and talk to them.

I doubt whether anything will happen however because senior managers have obviously invested a lot of money in the system and they will not be willing to admit that it does not work for the customer.

Your people are your best asset given the chance I'm sure they could find you a better solution at a much lower cost than IT.

dacouch

They won't change their mind, as you have mentioned they have invested a lot of money in the IT and redunancy packages. The other major issue is the Senior Management will not want to admit they made a mistake.

It's rumoured that Aviva would have liked to have pulled out of the Indian call centre, this is because there is so much competition for the right staff over there that the turnover of staff is really high. This brings with it extra training costs and the killer punch being wage inflation for the right call centre staff of between 20% and 30%. Allegedly it works out not much cheaperto have the indian call centre as it would to have a UK call centre. Once you have added in all the business they lost because of the call centre and the damage to their reputation it starts to be a tough call on whether it's worth having the over seas call centre. It would be too humiliating for them to pull out though (Although quite a few Insurers who had overseas call centres realised the draw backs and returned their call centres to the UK.

If Aviva could do away with all the staff and replace them with technology apart from the senior management they would. I've been to the Norwich HO and it's full of graduates who no very very little about insurance and have no common sense.

Norwich Union used to be the leading brand, this made them complacent, they are only the largest Insurer now through spending ridiculous amounts on advertising. They have alienated most of the brokers through their business decisions and constantly changing. If you looked 5 or 10 years the vast vast vast majority of brokers would have their cars, homes and businesses insured by NU/GA and would be happy paying over the odds for the definate benefit of an NU/GA policy. By making decisions solely on stripping out costs (The mature and well trained staff eg the most expensive were the first to be made redunant) they destroyed the great thing about NU/Aviva which was the great service that their reputation was built on.

I could tell you some amusing stories about how little there seniorish staff actually know about insurance, maybe save that for another day.

They are now just another Insurer with above average cover but below average service, a lot of brokers still use them for clients and their own insurance (But no where near as many) because they know when they get problems they can pull strings to get things resolved but for your average Joe Bloggs direct customer you have to run the gauntlet.

Have a look at this google return http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&source=hp&q=aviva+redundancies&meta=&aq=2&oq=aviva+red&fp=698b2be80cf6bcd7

raskazz

Voice recognition software. Brilliant.

It could only have been dreamt up by some smarmy graduate in a flash suit, with no experience of a real customer-facing role but who has somehow been endowed with a large budget to burn and a weak line manager. God only knows what a colossal amount of money will have gone down the toilet on that. Meanwhile beleaguered claims handlers and underwriters will be being forced to skimp on every possible expense.

Mr_Man_Full_of_Love

Can anyone confirm that Beccus/Becca exists? The automated system at least ensures a response..........even if it's useless.:rotfl:

Quentin

Until very recently Beccus/Becca used this site (without authorisation) to spam the aviva company website in every post made.

So who knows if its really a bot??

cjp-20

Brilliant letter, very funny but make a fantastic point would love to here the response

cogito

I have friends at Aviva who have had to reapply for their jobs on four or five occasions. They clearly have no conception of the unsettling effect this has on their employees. The weird thing is that the outcome always seems to be pre-ordained and the ones who really want to leave are kept on simply because it's too expensive for Aviva to pay them off.

They really don't have a clue what they're doing. 2 years ago, they reduced commissions to some of their biggest brokers. As a result, Towergate (to give just one example) moved over £200m in premiums to other markets. Now Aviva have appointed a new chief exec who is trying to get the business back.

7 years ago, they chucked out big ticket business that they mostly inherited from CGU. Guess what? They now want it back.

dacouch

Cognito I remember the NU/ Aviva doing this, they caused me (and other brokers) lots oif grief by cleansing their books of anything they perceived to be high risk. When I say cleansed they increased the premiums by large multiples.

I had a client who had been with NU for decades paying circa £2000 a year, they had a smallish e/l claim for £12000 and the following year Aviva decided it was two high risk (They rented out flowers and plants to offices) the renewal premium was £23000. I had to rebroke this for circa £5500 and I also had to rebroke a few other cases.

When the Aviva rep came around all excited to announce that Aviva were now actively looking for high risk business I asked her if she liked sex and travel.

They have so many changes of direction now days (Normally when they get new management).

This rep used to amuse me as she was 24 her qualifications for the job were just graduating with a history degree. I stopped bothering sending Motor Trade presentations to Aviva after they insisted I submit them on one of their Motor Trade presentation forms which run to 35 pages (If you know the Aviva way you will know the ridiculous questions these ask). IU explained to her I could type one presentation and fax / email it to all the other companies and they would quote (I get compliments on the quality of my presentations). I could not be bothered to go to the hassle of printing out then filling out a 35 page form, then waiting 3 weeks for them to quote and for it to be twice the market rate.

After me not submitting any motor trade and her knowing that I write large amounts of this she decided she would accept my presentations but they would go through her so she could check they had the correct information on them to save wasting the underwriters time (How condescending). I submitted a presentation along with good quality photos of the risk. The photos included the cars on the lot with the signs on top of the cars with the "Comes with RAC Warranty / Inspection. I subsequently had a call from her stating she could not submit this to the underwritter without a full written explanation as to what these were along with the relevant contract wordings. I could not hide my disbelief, I explained these are common practice for motor traders and the underwriter would know what they are. She still would not accept it, I then advised her to ring the RAC herself as Aviva owned them. She would not do this so I just told her to put the presentation in file 13.

Aviva have their uses, but if Aviva were a girlfriend they would be described as High Mainenance