What adjusters & McDonald's have in common

You finally get to your hotel. You drove all night and you’re tired and nervous. You plop down on the bed and open your lap top. You’re happy to see a claim has been e-mailed to you. But within a few minutes you’re petrified to see a hundred claims have been e-mailed to you. You start to read the first claim loss report and notice the guidelines tell you that you must make twenty-four hour contact and inspect within seventy-two hours.

Now, you might feel overwhelmed. How am I going to run all these claims in three days? 

Take your time—you’ll get there faster. 

That’s a Dougism. I’ve said it to every adjuster I’ve ever trained in. On the surface it may sound like it doesn’t make sense, but in practice it works, especially when time is an issue.  And when you’re working a storm your most precious commodity is time. Learn to use it well and you’ll calm the storm.

Typical protocol for claims handling applies at all times, whenever possible.  At a CAT (catastrophe) it’s not possible. So, you’re an adjuster—adjust.

A hundred claims in a hundred different places. Where do you begin?

You should get the claims printed. Technology is changing every second. I used to haul a printer with me and print the claims. Now, I’ve adapted a process to save time and money. You don’t have to do it the way I do, and you may discover a better way, but this is what I’ve found to work well and efficient.  

The key is to do it like McDonald’s.

Do the same thing every time. And then, if it’s one or one hundred and one claims you can handle it, because it’s just one claim—you just do it over and over.  

Here’s what I do when I have a hundred claims in my e-mail inbox.

I have three things open on my desktop: a new Word doc., a mapping program, and my e-mail.

The first thing that needs to happen is that I need to get claims printed, mapped and phone calls made with appointment times. This you should attempt to do within twenty-four hours of receiving the claim.

·         Print

·         Map

·         Call

I open the first claim and highlight and copy only what I need; which is the name of carrier (Insurance Company). You may think you don’t need this but if you start working more than one carrier you’ll be glad you have it when a cautious insured asks you who you’re with. If you say State Farm when you should have said All  State—you won’t be in good hands.

You’ll also need the claim number, they ask for that a lot to prove you’re who you say you are. And then, of course you need the insured’s name, address, phone number and a brief description of damage.

You may need policy information depending on the type of loss. For example if your claim is a commercial or farm policy and you’re looking at several buildings you’ll want to know if that structure is covered, for how much and what type of coverage, ACV (actual cash value) or RCV (replacement cost).  The loss report may have several pages but generally all you need is how to reach the folks and what they’re claiming.

So in summary, what you want to copy from the loss report to a claim sheet is:

·         Carrier (Insurance Company)

·         Claim number

·         Insured’s name, address, contact information

·         Description of damage

·         Coverage info. (possibly)

I paste the information from the e-mail to the empty Word doc. This will become your claim sheet, or field report or whatever you want to call it. It will be what you take notes on during your inspection.

Then I highlight and copy the address and I paste it into a mapping program. Choose whatever one you like as long as it can accept numerous addresses at one time, such as Streets and Trips, DeLorme or Map Quest. (Depending on the adjusting software you are using you may be able to upload the addresses straight to your mapping software all at one time. Xactimate has this capability.)

I highlight the insured’s name and save the Word doc to their name. I create a folder on my desk top named after the storm, for example: Hurricane Virgin or 2012 Ice.  This way you’ll have a simple record of every claim separated by catastrophes. Repeat this until you have every claim copied to a Word document, and the addresses input on your mapping program. And you didn’t have to type anything—just copy and paste.

Printing—without a printer

Next to print the claims without a printer. I have an account with efax; http://www.efax.com/. You can send and receive faxes from your computer similar to sending an e-mail. I fax the claims in one fax from the folder on my desktop to the front desk of the hotel.

Which reminds me, of a side note here: I try to stay in the same hotel chain, Choice Hotels. As a member you gather points toward free stays and I’m not charged for my faxes.

Appointment Setting

While I’m waiting for a call from the front desk to let me know I have a fax, I look at the map to decide what order to run the claims.  Whatever makes the most sense geographically is how you try to run them. 

Once I get the claims I put them in the order I’d like to run them. I put the appointment time and date in the top right hand corner. For example: Mon. 10.22.12. 9-10 a.m. I give myself an hour window for time of arrival. Set as many claims per day as you can run and write. This will vary depending on the type of claims you’re running. Leave yourself enough time so you’re not rushed.  Four to five claims per day is a good number.

When I was younger I’d run eight or more a day as long as it was light enough to take pictures I was running. But ultimately what would happen is, I’d get behind on my paper work and I’d have to take off a few days or more, to write.

            It may sound like a good plan until implemented. The trouble with running as many as possible and then stopping to write is that the first claims are old by the time you get them submitted and the folks will begin calling asking, where’s my money?

The quality of your work suffers as well with the passage of time before writing your claim.

Imagine writing an estimate, labeling photos and summarizing your conversation with the insured within a day of your inspection. The inspection is still fresh in your mind.

            Now, let’s say a week has gone by and you’ve taken a thousand photos, you’ve looked at thirty houses and have had as many conversations with homeowners and contractors. Now, you’re trying to remember thirty houses ago, one thousand photos ago and sixty conversations ago to write your estimate. As good of a memory as you may have, and as good of notes as you may take, in the long run it’ll take you longer to do it this way—and you won’t produce as good of quality loss report.

I run six days per week. If you have claims with interior damage sometimes they are best run on Saturdays because folks are home more often that day.

An example of a time schedule is:

Arrive at first claim between 9-10:00 a.m.

Arrive at second claim between 11-12:00 p.m.

Third claim 1-2:00 p.m.

Fourth claim 2-3:00 p.m.

Fifth claim 3-4:00 p.m.

(The above is and excerpt from Adjuster's Life) 

~

Hope that helps…next we’ll talk about what to talk about when you make your initial contact.

Adjust well,  

Doug

Adjusting, everybody’s got to do it…some do it for a living

Adjusters Life@aol.com 

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