Stephen Bruington

"Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am." 
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December 3, 2009

Simplify, K.I.S.S., and C.Y.A.

(I apologize for the implied explitives in the title of this post, they were, however, necessary.)

Admittedly, a better title might have been "Simplify, Simplify, Simplify", but either way - my point is it's time for me to rein in some things in my life and "trim off the fat". I'm all over the place, so much so that a friend on Twitter made a comment about my far-reaching social networking appearance (not influence), and asked how I manage to maintain it all. The truth is, I don't maintain much of anything, anymore, or ever have. I need to close a few accounts, delete a ton of email addresses and K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid).

At one point in time I had the grand idea of creating an email address, for every account, everywhere on the internet (the unnecessary commas have been added for an intentional...momentary, but rather obnoxiously...long...pause). I chose to use the prefix "i83." to begin each address, for example: i83.facebook@gmail.com. This email, of course would be used as my login/contact email address for...you guessed it - Facebook! I also had, among others, i83.itunes, i83.redbox, etc. (You don't even want to know how many there actually are...nearly 2 dozen.)

I admit, I'm a little OCD and I'm having a hard time coming to grips with actually deleting, and discontinuing the use of these email addresses. It feels "clean", and it made sense to me when I did it, albeit I can't remember why, but I'd like to think it was a reasonable idea. It is, however difficult to remember whether or not I'm using a custom address, or stephen@bruington.com, which is my personal, 'everything else' email address.

In order to simplify I feel it's necessary to cut down on the number of accounts I have, but do not (for many reasons) maintain. I have written about, and even tried this before: http://blog.stephenbruington.com/tag/migration, but this time will be different, right? ;)

Here's the thing, I have accounts at places I know nothing about. Yep, little old me has probably already been to your website and established a username/password, etc. I've been on, logged into and/or used these, and many more: blip.fm, last.fm, facebook.com, twitter.com, bebo.com, orkut,com, linkedin.com, friendfeed.com, posterous.com (Haha! Thanks for hosting my blog.), wordpress.com, tumblr.com, livejournal.com, typepad.com, typingweb.com, plaxo.com, rememberthemilk.com, stikkit.com (which, by the way was the BEST ever note, memo, sticky message website...ever), gmail.com, hotmail.com, yahoo.com, flickr.com, photoshop.com, gmx.com, meebo.com, AIM, Skype, ICQ, myspace.com, and many, many others. Wow!

Do I really need all that stuff? No, I don't. I know I don't, but I think I have a problem...an addiction. I would like to keep the following:

Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, tumblr, posterous, flickr, Skype, Photoshop.com, and maybe a few others. I could write a book about all these sites and why I've used them, but I don't think anyone would read it. In fact, if you've made it this far you're either my wife (thank you Sweetheart), or crazy!

C.Y.A. - yes, the 'A' stands for what you think it stands for. I don't have a real good reason for using it as part of my title other than the fact that the internet is filled with identity-stealing goons and...quite frankly, I'm exposed. I need to CYA and get rid of a lot of these sites with my information. If you've made it *this far, please do not SPAM my email inbox. I realize I posted my email address to the world, but I don't believe anyone will use it to contact me anyway, so what the heck.

That's it. I need to consolidate and do away with a lot of useless accounts, and unused (by ME) websites. Thanks for reading, I'll let you know, at a later date what I decide to do, and how the cleanup is going, and/or turns out.

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Filed under  //   creative   Gmail   goals   hope   ideas   migration   posterous   Twitter  

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November 24, 2009

Enrollment Creative Thinking

Earlier today I received call from a woman speaking on behalf of her daughter. It turns out her daughter is 25 years old, has cerebral palsy and is a Medicare beneficiary. I immediately "warmed" to this woman due to the soft spot in my own heart for people touched by cerebral palsy. (My daughter, who is 8 years old, has cerebral palsy.)

I followed Medicare, and UnitedHealthcare policies and procedures while gathering information on both the mother, and her daughter. I wasn't able to speak with the daughter, at the time so I had her mother provide me everything I needed and we proceeded to discuss plan benefits.

We found, in her area, a PFFS (Private-Fee-For-Service) plan that would meet 'the daughter's' needs and determined we could complete enrollment today. I finished documenting her account (in our Customer contact/management system) and was just about to begin the enrollment when I realized, I haven't spoke with the daughter!

Just before the enrollment I put the mother on hold and asked for help. It turns out that 'the mother' does not have POA (Power of Attorney) and as such we would have been unable to enroll her daughter in this plan. (Normally I would give her my phone number, and extension and have her call be back. It's important to note that UHC does not operate "normally". At this point, I'm NOT ALLOWED to give out my phone number and extension on inbound sales calls. Which means if I don't close the sale, I lose it.)

My idea (at first) was to call the daughter, from my phone, and get her permission that way. It turns out that that could be perceived (by Medicare) as solicitation and was therefore declared a non-viable option. I didn't want to lose the sale, so I presented my idea! Our conversation unfolded as follows: 

Me: "Ma'am, I'm going to need you to call your daughter, from your phone and have her give her permission for me to complete this enrollment with you, on her behalf."

Caller: "Okay. Wait, I can't make 3-way calls from my phone."

"Ha. I don't mean to sound 'pushy' but most phones 'these days' are able to 3-way call."

"Oh really? How do I do it?"

"Press the Talk/Send button, call your daughter and wait for the call to connect. That should put me on hold and allow you to conference all 3 of us by pushing the Talk/Send button again."

"Okay, so push Talk, call my daughter, and push Talk again and we'll be talking to you. Okay. Let me try this. Wait, what's your number in case this doesn't work."

...I proceeded to break a few rules and gave her my phone number and extension...

Caller: "Okay. Here goes nothing. Hold on and I'll get her."

You can probably guess how this ended - the 3-way call worked, I recorded the daughter's permission to speak to her mother, on her behalf and completed a telephonic enrollment; go me. :)

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Filed under  //   career   creative   enrollment   hope   ideas   unitedhealthcare  

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