When I first got my own car, about 15 years ago, I went to my father’s insurance broker for cover. The broker is based in Cork and I live in Dublin and, from time to time, I have considered changing to a Dublin broker but I never got around to it. Today, I called the broker to check something on my renewal quote. Our conversation went like this:
Me: Hello, I’d like to check etc.
Him: That’s Anne, is it? I’ll get your file.
I haven’t spoken to him in a year or more and he still recognised me on the phone straight away. He didn’t need my insurance number, my surname, my date of birth, my phone number or a six digit activation code to find my file. I don’t think that his brokerage will be losing my custom any time soon.
And in completely unrelated news, the Princess lost her front tooth last night (a dramatic event I completely missed since I was out winning the office pub quiz with my crack team). Now she looks like this.
We used to be able to ring our actual bank branch and as we were their most exciting customers (having moved to Swaziland for a couple of years) they always remembered us. When some documents went astray (personal service was no barrier to mild incompetence, unfortunately) and I rang up to find out what was going on I got ‘ah yes we were just talking about this over our tea break’…
Just realised the word ‘bank’ might be a bit of a sore point over there. sorry…
Banks, what banks?