Enhancing Claim Communications

Claim Letters

Your customer does not see it when you read to your child at night, spoil the dog with treats, or donate to charity. The customer only knows of you and your company through the policy and the letters you write. If these are intimidating, unfair, or filled with writing errors, your letters will alienate customers instead of increasing their loyalty.

Nine claim executives were interviewed for this article, and all nine mentioned that their claim professionals spend at least half of their work week — 20 to 30 hours a week — writing letters and e-mails. Yet when asked how much training each adjuster has received in writing, the executives' answers included the following statements:

• "They had a class in college, about 20 years ago."
• "We send our people to a local college for a three-hour business writing class."
• "Every one of our adjusters has attended several one-day writing seminars."
• "We have supervisors read the writing of new adjusters until the supervisors are satisfied that their writing skills are good."

According to Jack Blyskal, chief claim officer at CSAC, "We have a system in which supervisors routinely review coverage letters or politically sensitive communications. Sometimes I'll read a letter, or even the CEO will review it."

At one claim department, the review of an adjuster's letters is a factor of how long that adjuster has been on board, regardless of his skills. Gage Johnson, vice president of claims at Deans & Homer, has been particularly successful at watching over commercial claim letters written by both underwriters and claim professionals at his 12 offices.

"Since we are a small company, we have time to review reservation-of-rights letters and many denial letters," said Johnson. "I encourage my people to write in a conversational tone, to write their letters as if they were talking in person to the recipient. I think customers appreciate a writer who gets to the point but also one who answers the question 'How does this story end?'"

In even the most communication-vigilant claim departments, more than half of the interviewees admitted that the claim letters they see have issues, including:

• Overuse of industry acronyms and jargon that perplex customers;
• Failure to outline the claim process to the reader; and
• Mistakes involving ambiguous phrases, faulty language, wording, lengthy sentences, and paragraphs.

A training manager at a large multi-line carrier said that she gives writing classes within her department, but complained that her adjusters don't reread their letters.

"They're too reliant on form letters," she said. "Also, they make mistakes with 'their' and 'there' as well as 'two' and 'too.' Some of the adjusters are not sure where to put an apostrophe or do not know the difference between a colon and semicolon. Their letters are stodgy, filled with words and phrases like 'herewith,' 'enclosed please find,' and 'pursuant to.'"

Form Letters

A main goal in the interviewing process was to learn how claim executives regard form letters, which are templates that give a claim writer a running start on communicating to the insured. Some companies have very few of them, while others have hundreds of them.

One can have too many form letters. By creating dozens of them, managers are assuming that the average adjuster can never be trusted to use his own style in practically any situation that arises. The problem is that the same adjusters who use the form letters often create a mish-mash of ideas that fill the form letter with phrases and tone that run contrary to its original intent. Like the free-form letters, the form letters at many carriers are stuffy and a bit tough.

One Texas claim manager, who asked to remain anonymous, called his company's form letters "stodgy, outdated, and on the verge of unfriendly."

Best Practices Guidelines

There's an array of ways that claim departments handle best practices guidelines. Three of my interviewees said that they did not have any and that they either depended instead on informal procedures that have evolved over time or have simply borrowed best industry practices and tailored them.

One QA vice president at a medium-sized Florida TPA, however, had more than 25 best practices documents in place. They had been written by a variety of people, mostly lawyers, at her company. To perfect their style, she paid an outside vendor more than $20,000 and was delighted with the result. The vendor had caught and corrected an average of six writing issues per page.

Joe Kaiser, vice president of crop claims at Farm Bureau of Iowa, takes a lively interest in enhancing parts of claim procedures that are too vague for his taste.

"When an investigator meets a claimant, that investigator's inquisitiveness during an interview is a vital factor in claim handling," said Kaiser. "They take a statement, ask pertinent questions about what happened, and, if they are skilled, they might ask about everything from the weather to details about eyewitnesses, being sensitive to every aspect of a claimant's demeanor, body language, and eye contact."

The aforementioned Gage Johnson points to just a few in-house guidelines for property and liability, yet once a year he thoroughly reviews each. Other claim executives explain that merging with or acquiring a new company will be cause for updating these practices. For instance, when choosing between two companies whose best practices for handling auto claims may vary, many claim executives go with the guideline that is least likely to "box us in."

Also, a new law governing a type of claim may, in itself, be an "alert" for revising a best practice guideline.

Claims Style Guide

Unlike form letters or best practices guidelines that can be as inhibiting as they are helpful, there is a lot to be said for claim departments that have their own style guides. These style guides can be brief (fewer than 25 pages); can be posted online as well as on a shelf; and can help new hires and old-timers by applying stylistic advice on letters, formatting, e-mail, spacing, punctuation, avoiding wordiness, improving tone, and many other helpful ideas to the company's own culture.

Ironically, there are probably fewer than one in 20 Best A-rated companies that distribute a style guide to its employees. Some claim departments choose to follow the AP Style Guide, while others, like Gage Johnson, insist on their claim people reading both The Elements of Style and The Elements of Business Writing. The beauty of a style guide is that it "translates" principles of writing into practical terms to help adjusters and often includes a brief appendix showing typical denials, reservation-of-rights letters, and other common external communications.

John Carothers, CEO of Dentists Insurance Co. in California, offers his claim professionals an internal style guide that was developed by the company's marketing professionals. While the manual is helpful, Carothers says that he still sees claim letters with ambiguous phrasing, poor punctuation, wordiness, and lengthy sentences.

General Comments

There was a consensus among all interviewees that writing skills have decreased over the past generation. Jack Blyskal attributes this to poor habits picked up from writing e-mails and less emphasis on good writing skills in our schools — or a combination of both.

"Budget cuts in school have led to larger classes, taught by teachers who no longer have time to correct papers in a thorough way," said Blyskal. "One of my adjusters recently wrote, 'Do you know where the settlement position is at?"'

A claim manager in the Midwest adds, "As I review my adjusters' letters, I become so frustrated that I sometimes want to ask them 'Can you please explain what this letter means?'"

One of the carriers with which I have worked insures educators. The vice president of claims for this company told me how he received a poorly written letter that was actually corrected by the insured and forwarded to the CEO. I wondered why it took one embarrassing letter to generate training that should be ongoing and proactive, not spur-of-the-moment and driven by circumstance.

Whether at a bank, an oil company or an insurance company, it pays to have a plan and get things right the first time — not cut corners. It should not take the threat of irreversible damage to a carrier's or independent agency's reputation to keep claim writing skills on the front burner. No amount of geckos or perky auto ladies in commercials can win the hearts and minds of customers like the clarity and caring that is communicated in a well-written letter, an e-mail that gets to the point without being abrupt, or a phone call that communicates empathy with someone who has suffered a loss.

Gary Blake is director of the Communication Workshop. He can be reached at garyblake725@gmail.com, or www.writingworkshop.com.