Interstate Group Holdings

Debbie Cohen

Building a Career in Customer Care and Claims

Customer service has been my passion for as long as I have worked. Helping people is what I am drawn to and it translated into customer service when I entered this industry over 20 years ago as a coordinator. From there I moved into customer service management, then quality & administration and then to Interstate Moving, where I oversee both the customer care and claims departments.

Claims was a logical extension in my career path, because it gives you 20/20 hindsight on how customer service is performing across the whole organization, from sales to customer service, to operations through to the billing process. When looking at the claims filed with a company, it tells the story of how a company is performing and at a management or executive level you can see which areas have issues that need attention.

Balancing Efficiency, Process Improvement and Customer Experience

Having earned my green belt in Six Sigma a few years ago, the importance of process improvement and efficiency puts a spotlight on customer experience.  By utilizing AI and new modern tools we look at our process and efficiencies to make changes so that the customer experience is smoother and faster and this provides the balance that is needed.  Adjudication of a claim still requires a human component.  For example, there are still some claims that need to be entered manually and even the ones that upload automatically require a manual 72-hour review for quality assurance. The assigned examiner checks the claim form for completeness and confirms that all documentation has been submitted.  For any missing information, the examiner emails the customer to follow up.

To improve the customer experience, we are working with our IT department and AI to automate the intake and review process.  This creates an efficiency for the examiner, so they have a complete file to adjudicate, which is the work that needs a person.  Claims require checks and balances against service level agreements, contracts and industry standards and some of them are not black and white. So, we automate the process for speed and keep the judgment with the examiners.

Creating Customer-Focused Teams

Anything worth accomplishing generally requires a team. Leadership on a cross functional customer-focused team means providing a vision and end goal for each member on the team and then assisting them with seeing how their participation is integral to achieving the collective goal or vision.  This takes patience, some out of the box thinking and acceptance that there may be more than one way to achieve the goal.

Learning this lesson is a large part of putting together a successful team and in fact helped me to achieve my goal of winning a corporate customer choice award in a past role.  This lesson has stayed with me across both the Claims and Customer Care departments that I now oversee.  Our teams are the best source of information, innovative ideas and knowledge for our customers.

The Growing Role of AI in Customer Care and Claims

AI, without question, though I do not believe it will replace customer care representatives or claims managers in my lifetime. We are already seeing a resurgence of people who want an actual person after years of pressing 1 for this and 2 for that only to land in frustration. Plenty has been written about millennials and Gen Z wanting text messages and notifications, but when it comes to complaints or claims, customers want to talk to a live person.

AI will make the greatest impact on efficiency, forcing the business world and the claims world to look at their processes and ask where it fits.

Advice for Professionals Entering Claims and Customer Experience

Start with your passion, because without it you will not enjoy the job. Customer Service requires empathy and a passion for helping people. Adjudicating claims requires a thick skin as well. Customers who reach the claims process are not always at their best. They come with anger and frustration because something was damaged, broken or lost. They do not always understand why an item is not replaced at full value or how deductibles work. They attach sentiment to their belongings and we do not pay claims on sentimentality.

Coming to claims from customer experience means the empathy is already there and you want the customer to be as satisfied as circumstances allow. What claims does give back is a solid look at where the organization needs to correct itself and for someone with a passion for Customer Service and Quality ... that is pretty satisfying as well.