"The main frustration in health care insurance may be with costs and coverage denials, but those concerns are exacerbated when a client has no reasonable recourse," David Banks writes. "I’d argue further that the brick wall we call customer service is a contributing factor to the broad decline of trust in institutions." (Dreamstime/Tribune News Service)

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I’ve been a journalist for a long time, which makes a person overexposed and jaded, and for several years in my personal life I’ve been dealing with the machinery of eldercare, which can make a person angry and calloused, so I admit that my immediate thought after hearing about the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a New York sidewalk last month wasn’t about his family.

Instead it was this: What are we in for? The intrigue of a John Grisham novel, or just another example of how much people and their systems and their society stink?

UnitedHealth Group, a Minnesota-based conglomerate of which UnitedHealthcare is a division, is big enough and controversial enough — and impenetrable enough — to inspire the sort of plot that Grisham might write, but the answer turned out to be the latter. The shooting suspect, Luigi Mangione, was a privileged lone lupine, perhaps disgruntled over coverage denials or just in general, getting his revenge and hoping to send a message in the process — perhaps. Or maybe he was just off his rocker. Or now wants a future jury to think so.

And then the real shocker: the number of anonymous people on social media who loved loved loved the message they thought he was sending — enough for the rest of us to detect amid the cesspool an authentic expression of common frustration that shouldn’t be ignored.

So this is another of those moments when something that should go without saying does need to be said: There’s no justification for killing someone over things that don’t work the way they should. And there’s no salute for schadenfreude.

Above all, Brian Thompson — according to a statement from his family —“was an incredibly loving husband, son, brother and friend.” And “a devoted father” to two sons. He mattered to people, as we all do, for reasons other than work.

Nevertheless, the killing might end up being the catalyst for a necessary and neglected discussion over the direction of health care, even if it was a sick way to get there.

But I’d like to posit a broader issue yet: the breakdown of integrity in the interaction between corporate America and consumers.

Tell me: In your recent experiences with any sizable enterprise in any industry, could you detect anything that resembles what you think of as customer service?

I’ll answer for you: Probably not.

I’ve been looking for a way to write about this for several years, but I’ve been waylaid by the fact that I work for a company that itself must provide (as I hear it) better customer service if it wants to succeed. The whole “glass houses” thing.

But the problem isn’t just newspaper content disagreements or missed delivery; it’s endemic, and it isn’t going away.

When I call a big business these days and encounter a person who not only wants to help but knows how, it’s revelatory. We used to take it for granted, because those businesses needed us. But now customer service seems more like what the main character in the Coen brothers movie “A Serious Man” was told when he wanted to ask questions of God: “Hashem doesn’t owe us the answer, Larry. Hashem doesn’t owe us anything. The obligation runs the other way.”

(If you don’t mind foul language — scratch that, if you adore foul language — I’d also recommend a decade-old Funny or Die video about Comcast.)

The main frustration in health care insurance may be with costs and coverage denials, but those concerns are exacerbated when a client has no reasonable recourse. I’d argue further that the brick wall we call customer service is a contributing factor to the broad decline of trust in institutions.

About all this, though, I have more questions than solutions. Which is OK. Any good discussion has to begin with questions. Here are some of mine:

Do businesses think people are idiots — who believe, for instance, that “your call is important to us,” given what follows? Tighten the phone trees. Dispense with the scripts. Empower employees at all levels to take action and teach them how to elevate effectively. (Hope for problems to be handled, not just vanish because a customer has given up.)
Do businesses even know any more, at any level, how to solve the idiosyncratic problems their customers might bring to them? (This starts with knowing how to triage.)
Is one of the reasons they dodge adequate response that a fair amount of complaints are angry or invalid or at least poorly informed? (Customers typically have one issue on their mind — their own. They don’t likely bring to the table an understanding of how it fits into the big picture, though they should have a willingness to learn.)
Every business has a website. Could their online presentations at least be transparent and functional enough for customers to quickly figure out the best place to direct a concern, without having to waste minutes or hours or days waiting for a return email, or in meaningless chat, or on hold? (Many businesses have hidden this information.)
Have businesses overestimated what their customers want from automation? (Efficiency when a matter can be easily handled; effective engagement when the matter at hand is complicated or unique.)
If those in the corporate world decided to take all this seriously and improve the situation, it would require investment — more people, better pay, operations closer to home. Are customers willing to absorb some of the costs? Are Americans willing to fill those jobs? If not, are they willing to allow a sufficient number of migrants into the country to do work that won’t ever vie for a Nobel Prize? (AI might one day do it better than people can, but how much power should we cede to AI?)

Perhaps you have questions beyond these. Or inside information about how customer service works. Perhaps you can articulate a defense for why things are the way they are. I know, above all, that you have your own stories.

Write them up and send them to opinion@startribune.com. We’ll publish what we reasonably can, though it won’t include specific allegations we can’t easily confirm. Maybe the matter can gain traction the way things ought to — not with violence or threats, but with authentic discussion. And with an outcome that leaves people feeling that something worthwhile has happened. Which they shouldn’t feel yet.

about the writer

David Banks

Assistant Commentary Editor

David Banks has been involved with various aspects of the opinion pages and their online counterparts since 2005. Before that, he was primarily involved with the editing and production of local coverage. He joined the Star Tribune in 1994.