By Andrew Farlow, Head of Claims
Three months to the day of the devastating fire, Cole Clark was making guitars again. The company’s CEO Miles Jackson attributes this phenomenal recovery to the efficient and professional way in which Lumley Insurance and broker OAMPS worked together to get the company back in business.
The Lumley Insurance claims assessor was on site the afternoon of the fire, though he couldn't gain access then as the site was unsafe. Within 72 hours, the initial claim approval had come through.
Broker Luke Temperton was taken aback by the sheer speed of the claims handling. "It was fantastic," says Luke. "Hand on heart I can say it was the smoothest handling of a claim of this size that I had ever experienced.
"I would rate the service 9.5 out of 10. Lumley got the business up and running as soon as possible. Miles was over the moon."
Click here to read Recovering from a factory fire: the Cole Clark story.
Watch the Cole Clark Guitars claim case study below.
To that end, we introduced the newly created role of National Claims Broker Relationship Manager in late 2012 whose job it is to seriously engage and communicate with our claims counterparts in broking firms. Most insurers have someone in a broker claims relationship role now, but Lumley led the charge.
Around the same time we started systematically surveying brokers at the conclusion of claims to gauge their satisfaction. The objective of our one-minute, two-question Claims Customer Monitor Net Advocacy Score (NAS) survey, which we send out to our broker claims counterparts no more than once a week, is to identify areas of our claims management service in need of improvement.
Whenever we get a low score, which is calculated using a similar methodology to Net Promoter Scores, the claims manager follows the broker up with a phone call. This feedback has been invaluable for implementing continuous improvements to our claims management service.
And our efforts are paying dividends as the Cole Clark Guitars case study and our NAS results over the past year confirm (see graph below). In December, we scored our best NAS score ever of 37, with 50% of brokers rating our claims service nine or 10 out of 10 and a further 37% rating us as either a 7 or 8 out of 10 – a great result.
Sometimes delays in settling a claim are unavoidable because the site is unsafe or there’s a lengthy building approval process that needs to be followed. While we can’t change these things, the ability to make a speedy decision is something that’s usually within our control and makes a big difference to clients during an often traumatic time.
To do that, we ensure that claims managers with appropriate experience are assigned to more complex claims.
Our top priority when handling any substantial claim is getting the client’s business up and running as quickly as possible – from temporary premises or a permanent address.
Helping people at their lowest ebb, when they've lost everything, is such a rewarding feeling. And at the end of the day, that’s what the insurance business is all about even though we don’t always communicate this benefit effectively to the broader community.
Do you have a great claims experience to share? Does the insurance industry do enough to blow its own trumpet when it comes to claims or is it still the best kept secret?