February 16, 2012

How Good Was Animas Customer Service?

Hint: I’m writing thank you notes.

A milestone in our kids' school careers is the 8th grade play. All the kids participate in a a number of ways - acting, makeup, making props and other team building processes. Delaney was practicing acting yesterday. Her part calls for her to dramatically roll across stage or some such thing. As she did her pump slipped out and she dramatically rolled it was across more than the actual stage. Exit one cracked Ping pump screen, stage left.

Amimas has always been great about replacing pumps when life happens. Life, not accidents. Being a regular kid is no accident. It is the goal.*

Sometimes when life happens, pumps need to be replaced. That is a great thing! It means the T1D kid was more focused on being normal than being T1D with an inulin pump.

While replacing a pump sounds easy, it actually isn’t. Our friends in the device business have to keep track of everything to keep the regulators happy. They gotta know who has what device, made when, with what parts, by what factory and probably at what time and if that time was daylight savings time or not. That way, if anything ever goes wrong, with any of the parts, they know who they are gonna call. Dotting i-s and crossing t-s takes systematic processes, rules, records, people and time.

Aminas’s offices are about 45 minutes from my house. When I can, I drive down for replacements. It saves a night time without a pump. That Animas can, at times, make that happen is brilliant.

I know the names of two of the people who made that happen yesterday, Steve and Bill. They made magic because of who they are and because they could. All too often we ascribe the role of villain to the companies who make the tools we rely on. The truth is way more often they are the mild mannered alter egos of super heroes who are trying to live with in the rules. They get what we are trying to do, which in this case is let life happen. When they can, they slip into the spandex and become super heroes.

I think there is probably more than one Steve and Bill at Animas. I’m waiting on a return call to get last names so I can mail LY/MI pins with thank you cards. All in all if they are busy helping others with real emergencies I’m cool. Somehow if getting a name takes longer than getting a pump replaced that would be magic where it matters.

Got as story of Magic Service? I would love to hear about it as a post here or as a link here to your own blog post about a hero.

*More Your Diabetes May Vary ramblings about The Goal:
http://www.ydmv.net/2008/08/what-is-your-goal.html
http://www.ydmv.net/2008/03/newbie-advice-long-run.html


5 comments :

  1. I'm with you. Omnipod, for us, has always been great. Dexcom, too. Omnipod, esp., doesn't make you wait forever to talk to someone. That in itself is magic.

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  2. Props to Steve and Bill, and all others who are superheroes like them and make magic happen! I absolutely love this highlighting of good things, Bannet. Great idea here. I'll go through the mind vault and see if there's anything lingering in there worth sharing!

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  3. Thanks Michael.

    I look forward to seeing who you write about. Be sure to give me a nudge when it is up. I figure If I am gonna complain about lousy service I am obligated to recognize outstanding service too.

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  4. Animas has always been amazing for us! Once my sons pump took on water, 8pm on a Sunday night, it shut off and would not turn back on, I called Animas, and they were the best! We had a new pump delivered to our door in less then 2 hours! Here on a Sunday NOTHING is open or running that time of night. But they made it happen, even called back to make sure we had received it. We will be customers for life, if it is up to me :)

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  5. awesome! i've had excellent experiences with my local medtronic rep, and one of them factors in a very small way to a post i've been meaning to write since december, so maybe this will motivate me to finally get to it. thanks!

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