Count the inbound calls to a claims desk for a week and sort them by reason. In most insurers and underwriting agencies, the biggest category is not new claims or disputes. It is customers asking what is happening with a claim they have already lodged. Has it been received? Has the assessor been out? When will it be paid?
Each call takes a few minutes of a handler's time and a little more of the customer's patience. Across every open claim, it adds up to a large share of the desk's capacity spent telling people things the system already knows.
Why customers call
They call because they cannot see anything. The claim went in by email or phone, they got an acknowledgement, and then nothing. From inside the business the claim is moving: it has been triaged, assigned, an assessor has been booked, a report is pending. From outside it is silence, and silence after lodging a claim feels like being ignored.
They also call because what they lodged was incomplete. A claim sent by email arrives as a story and some attachments. The handler needs the date of loss, the policy number, the photos and the quote. Each missing item means an email out and a wait, and the customer, who does not know what is missing, rings to ask.
Reducing the calls
- Structured lodgement. A claim form that asks for exactly what the handler needs, with photos and documents attached at the time, so the first contact from the desk is progress rather than a request for more information.
- Updates at every stage. An email or SMS when the claim is received, assigned, assessed and approved. Most calls stop when the customer hears first.
- Somewhere to look. A portal where the customer can see the claim's current stage, what has been done and what comes next.
What this looks like in a claims system
Insurers who have taken the status calls off the desk run claims as a workflow the customer can see. The claim is captured with the right fields, photos and documents from the start. It moves through defined stages, with tasks assigned to handlers and assessors and approvals recorded. Each stage change notifies the customer automatically and updates the portal. Handlers spend their time assessing and settling, and customers wait with information rather than without it.
Claims management is one of the systems we build most often for insurers and brokers, alongside quote and bind portals and policy administration. It is often the right place to start because the benefit is visible to customers and staff within the first month. A claims desk that stops answering status calls has found a good chunk of its capacity without hiring anyone.
If your claims desk spends its day on "where is it up to?", have a look at what we build for insurance, or tell us how a claim is lodged and tracked today.
