HOW NOT TO SELL ME OVER THE PHONE (PART 1)

I had a call from Charles from Cigna insurance at 2:53pm the other afternoon. This was the third time that Charles had called me and the first time that I picked up the phone. The other two times had been after 7pm and I’d missed both calls. Charles had also sent me a mail saying that he was trying to reach me because I’d filled in an online form to get an insurance quote.

All of this was sort of fine, except that I hadn’t asked anyone from Cigna to email or call me. There were plenty of places on their site where I could have asked them to email or call me. I didn’t.

So Charles may have been starting a bit in the hole with me during today’s call, but not so deep that he couldn’t pull himself out pretty quick. Charles had a very strong (to my American ears) Irish accent, and spoke fast as if he was reading a script, or as if he had said what he was saying to me many, many, many times to others.

Charles introduced himself, told me he was calling because I had requested information about a quotation. Not exactly true, as I just wanted to see a quote online, which I already had.

Charles then started to ask questions, presuming that I was a willing partner in this “meeting” that he had established by calling me. I answered the first couple to see where we are going, but as the questions kept coming and got more personal I interrupted him to ask why he needed to know these details to provide a quote. What I meant to ask him was “Why are you asking me questions without asking me if it’s okay if you ask me questions?” My bad.

He had a good answer, he just wanted to get the details right so he could get me the most accurate quote that I hadn’t requested of him. Fair enough. Kind of.

Then he started to ask me about my wife. These questions I liked even less, and I wondered why my wife’s name was important in getting a quote for medical insurance. In general, I’m thinking we can leave wives’ names out of pretty much everything.

I stopped Charles during his questioning (somewhat akin to what I imagine a 3rd world prison interrogation room would be like) to say, “You’ve started a question asking/answering process with me without telling me what you are going to ask, why you are asking, or how long it will take. Where are we going here?”

He told me that the more information he had the more accurate quote he could give me, and my wife’s name would improve the accuracy of his quote.

I very very politely told him that I wasn’t comfortable with that discussion in order to get a quote that I hadn’t asked for, thanked him for his time, and told him I was going to end the call now.

To which he replied “I’m going to end this call now too” so I was pleased that we were aligned at the ending, no matter how misaligned we may have been at the beginning.

Part 2: What could Charles have done differently to completely change my reaction to the call?