Customers - They Make Great Small Claim Loss Adjusters
The end of the year can be a great time to start some big picture thinking about where your organisation needs to head in 2017. In light of that, I have a question to pose. How is your organisation harnessing the opportunities offered by mobile technologies to digitally transform your processes and the customer experience?
If you have your internal or outsourced loss adjusters out in the field armed with apps on tablet devices, streaming data in real time from the location of the claim back to the claims management system, you have made a step in the right direction. However, if they are, and they’re dealing with small claims, there may be an even better way…
A recent survey by Accenture of 8,000 auto and home insurance customers in the US found that 61% say that “they would prefer to use digital channels to check the status of their claims.” 53% say “they would not recommend their insurers to others if they can’t interact digitally with them.”
So the evidence is in that customers are increasingly comfortable receiving claim status updates by sms or email. The question remains however, armed with their mobile phone or tablet, are they willing and able to play a part in the initial stages of the claims process? Could they could take on the role of the field loss adjuster for small, simple claims?
Picture a storm related claim as an example. Your customers can be enabled via a mobile based app to initiate the claim, auto-populating location, weather, time of the event and their policy details. Utilising on screen instructions in the app they can photograph the relevant parts of the property which have been damaged. Within minutes the claim data can be in the claims management system for processing and further assessment initiated if deemed necessary, or subject to claim history and other automated checks it could be settled without further human intervention.
This approach to the small claims initiation process effectively turns each customer into a motivated and willing field loss adjuster, it shortens the claim cycle and reduces the cost of processing per claim. During natural disaster events, when demand for field loss adjusters is at its highest, customers armed with a mobile device and an app represent a near elastic supply of small loss adjusting capacity.
This kind of solution offers a win-win for both the insurance company and the customer. And while it may at first appear that this isn’t a good outcome for loss adjusters, at the end of the day many insurance companies are already processing small claims without their involvement.
Indeed there are already insurance companies like AAMI who have put similar functionality into the hands of their customers via a mobile based app.
