November 2017 – Scary Monster Claimants
Scary Monster Claimants
In the ‘old-school-of-claims-management’, we would use a device called a ‘telephone’ to call the claimant and ask them questions.
I bet that an experienced claim manager would be able to assess a claimant’s motivation after about 30 seconds of conversation, asking a few pointed questions, drilling down on the responses.
However, today in our modern claims operation, it seems difficult to get claim managers to do this… Is it because they don’t have time? Or is it because the claimant is some scary monster that they avoid getting into any form of direct contact with…?
Have case-loads increased to the point where claim managers cannot use the most valuable tool they have … The ability to ask a question!
Trying to do More with Less
One thing is for sure: the less claim managers talk to claimants, the more their questioning skills and confidence will suffer.
Ok, maybe in the world of short term disability, there are too many pressures on claim managers, and case-loads are too high to call every claimant.
Maybe too much time is taken completing the documentation to support a claim, driven by over-zealous audit functions. Whatever the reason, we are under pressure to get better results with less resources.
Data Driven Claims Management
This is one of the reasons why The Claim Lab exists, to help solve these issues. You need to look at your STD claims and use segmentation to take the low risk claims away from claim managers.
This will enable claim managers to be re-focused on the complex claims and, with the help of analytical tools, these can be more accurately identified. This is an area where a big impact can be made!
Then monitor your transition rate, monitor your average duration, and see what happens!
If you are not getting the results you hoped for from your analytics, we can help you unravel the data. In today’s world, every claims operation must be driven by their data!