Overcoming the Future Shortage of Adjusters While Improving Claims Service
The May 2011 issue of Best's Review featured a series of articles around the future of adjusting. If you haven't yet seen or read the articles and have any interest in the field of claims adjusting, I would encourage you to get a copy of the magazine.
In an article entitled "Filling A Void, Property/casualty insurers need to hire and train the next generation of adjusters" written by Mike Mahoney and Mike Bishop, the authors share some fascinating insights and statistics.
According to a study by Deloitte Consulting in March 2006 entitled "How Insurance Companies Can Beat the Talent Crises" 84,000 hires would have been required to meet the 2014 target of 308,000 adjusters. Industry data suggests that not nearly that amount have been hired since the article was written.
Jump ahead to the second part of the title of this post that addresses the notion of improving claims services.
Many insurance carriers use some sort of call center to handle all or some portion of their claims. While many of these call centers are "specialized" the level of talent is often marginal. This means that the first time an insured calls to report a claim, the representative of your company that they are talking to may not be projecting the best image of your company - you know, the one that your company spent so much money on the TV commercial for to emphasize how great the company is in the event of a claim.
In most instances, call center personnel know a limited amount about your company in general, much less the business of insurance, the policy, or coverage related issues. As all they are really there for is to conduct "in-take" - or capture the information that will now be routed to someone else.
Think about this for a moment. The person on the other end of the phone - lets just call them a customer for the time being, has been a policyholder for 15 years, is reporting their first loss - a fairly traumatic event for most, is looking for information and action, and what they are likely going to get at best is an empathetic ear and a promise of a call back.
Now let's combine the two. At Service247 our Claims Concierge is an entry level adjuster. This means a person who has recently obtained their license but does not have any field experience. They have a career path, and their success is dependent upon how they do in their first job. Most are collage graduates entering the work force looking for a career (versus a job). And with the advent of technology, they don't have to sit in a call center 24 hours a day, we route calls so people can be working at home.
Now the experience is very different for the customer. The person they are speaking with is insurance knowledgeable, focussed on a career in insurance, has policy and coverage knowledge, and is empowered to take the next step - i.e. schedule an inspection or dispatch mitigation services. In fact, we don't call this in-take, we call this triage.
So the concept is pretty simple, let's start hiring the next generation of adjsuters in a way that delivers immediate value and benefit to our policyholders, agents, and company today.
