Adjusters: How Not To Drive Away Clients
Most insurance companies spend quite a bit of money on attracting a customer, yet when the truth be told, few do much to hold onto that customer. Although this is true for agents, underwriting, customer service and claims across the board, Id like to address just claims for now.
Twenty-five percent of the people who leave an insurance company after a claim leave because of some disagreement on the amount paid, or a concern of a rate increase. Seventy-five percent will leave because of the way they were treated in the claims process.
As we travel the country doing our "Awesome Claims Customer Service" class for various insurers (there is a separate class for agents, and yet another for underwriters), we have an opportunity to do a great deal of research as well. It is clear that many claims people do not make the connection between providing great customer service and making their jobs easier. Much worse than that, most do not really believe it should be their concern whether a customer stays.
Why is this the case? Very simple–no one has shown them. Therefore, some conclude that providing great customer service would take more time, and since they do not have enough time as it is, they ignore it. Even worse, they believe their company wants them to ignore it. The proof? Why else would the company give them so much work and talk to them only about the number of claims closed if they cared about customer service?
To the claims vice presidents, company presidents and chief executive officers out there, I know what you are saying. "I always talk about the importance of customer service and holding onto customers when I talk to the claims staff." That may be true. But after your speech, and after your question-and-answer session, they go right back to their jobs to fight the daily battle of too much work and not enough time, wishing they could do a better job, but knowing they cant.
They cannot do a better job without changing something specific in what they do in their jobs. And who is teaching them that? Not the supervisors and managers. They are usually ex-claims adjusters who also were not trained on how to hold onto customers while making their job easier. So who?
At the beginning of a class, I will choose someone to make a point. Let me try it here in this article.
Lets say Im a claims supervisor, and Ken is my adjuster. Ken is an inside claims adjuster just a few cubicles away from me. One day, I walk up to Ken and say, "Ken, I just want to give you a little advanced warning. You are going to be getting a call in a few minutes. Ken, it is going to be the single most important customer you will ever have to talk to. I mean, in your entire career, you will never talk to a more important customer than this personSo head's up!" And then I walk away.
Let me ask you, are you going to see a change in Ken? Is he going to pay closer attention to what the customer is saying? Will he respond with a little empathy when the customer is talking about how difficult this all is? Will he make a phone call, even if it is not his job, that might make the claims process go a little easier? Will he do something differently than he does now? You bet.
Let me submit thisany change you see in Ken, anything you can imagine one of your own people changing, is your opportunity for improvement in your company. Anything you can imagine seeing your own people change and doing for this customer means they could do it for all your customers if they wanted to. They just dont want to.
Why? Well, because that would take too much time, and they dont have any time. It is a funny thing that in claims we are in the business of dealing with human suffering, yet we are trained to ignore it. The fallacy is that many of the things they would change if they knew who was calling would actually save them time. They have just never had anyone be able to show them how.
In fact, even when a company decides it is going to begin to focus on holding onto customers, they often take the wrong approach. Another example, if I may.
We were once hired by an insurance claims department to develop a class on how to manage the angry customer. After meeting with top management, it was clear that they believed that if their adjusters were well skilled in dealing with angry people, their retention rate would increase. We came in and spent a day monitoring phone calls to get a feel for the issues at hand.
After a full day of monitoring phone calls, I had a chance to meet with the top management officials again. They were quite surprised when I told them, "Well, you certainly do not need a class on how to handle the angry customer."
They said to me, "You must be kidding. How is that possible? Our adjusters are always commenting on how often they have to deal with these angry customers. Our claims managers say they spend a tremendous amount of time with angry customers. How can you say we dont need a class on how to deal with them?"
My reply: "No, you dont need a class on dealing with angry customers. What you need is a class on how to stop pissing them off in the first place." After a moment of stunned silence, I explained that what the adjusters were doing, in the name of saving time, was causing the customer to be suspicious, angry and demanding.
I explained that when I teach our "Time Management for Claims Adjusters" class, I always get the same question: "Carl, how can I possibly return 50 phone calls in a day? How is that possible?"
My response is usually along the lines of "Well, I now know what your problem is. Because you asked that question, I now know how to help you. You see, you cant possibly return 50 phone calls in a day. Thats not possible. You are trying to solve an impossible problem. And since you are trying to solve an impossible problem, you have no hope of solving it. There is no way you can return 50 phone calls a day."
I go on to say: "You see, you just asked me the wrong question. The question you should have asked me was: What am I doing in the claims process thats causing me to get 50 phone calls? Because if we can solve that problem (which, by the way, we can very easily by changing a few things), then we dont have to worry about how to return 50 calls."
With that as an example, I explained to these company officials that the solution to their situation was not a class on how to deal with angry customers. It was that if the adjusters changed their process in dealing with customers just slightly, and avoided some simple pitfalls, they could gain the customers trust, reduce their anxiety, save time, and most importantly, increase customer retention.
With the Internet and other technological advancements, it will be increasingly easier for the insurance customers to research rates and move from company to company. While everyone is running around trying to make it easier for customers to join them, the true surviving companies will be the ones also focusing on making sure the ones they already have stay with them.
Carl Van is president and chief executive officer of International Insurance Institute Inc., which specializes in delivering on-site claims training to insurance companies across the country. He can be reached at 1-888-414-8811. For more information, go to www.insuranceinstitute.com.
Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, November 5, 2001. Copyright 2001 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.
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