Measuring claims cycle time from a customer perspective

Does it make sense to ask the homeowner to manage a $20,000 roofing project or an $84,000 water loss event with only a check and no real-time guidance? Adjusters are expert project managers at claims events, and not giving them the ability to guide the homeowner through this process as it unfolds is simply untenable. (Credit: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock)

As we wind down the year coming into the holidays and start to plan for 2022, a few questions plague me.  One, in particular, is since we as an industry talk about focusing very heavily on customer experience, don’t we have to examine some standards that we have used for decades and update them to reflect this new reality? One of these standards is cycle time in claims.

Historically, cycle time was measured from the time of first notice of loss (FNOL) until the claim file was closed. FNOL only happens when the policyholder initiates contact with the carrier. When a homeowner wakes up to a leaky pipe at 2 a.m., scrambles around for the first few hours trying to figure out where to shut off their water, figures out who they can call to help mitigate their loss and tries to salvage as much of their personal contents as possible, you can see how the time gets away from them and the loss might not be reported until that afternoon. Possibly worse, the policyholder calls into the carrier at 3 a.m. but gets the after-hours call center that can only take information, not provide any guidance, and then the homeowner waits hours for a call back from the actual adjuster.