Well, the days have all blended together as I’m sitting at the tail end of my first storm. Doesn’t seem like I’ve been in New York for 4 weeks, but I have. I’ll share a few highlights of my first storm and a few insights for you. Here’s what I found with my first CAT Adjuster flood claims.
It took me about two weeks to finally know enough about what I was doing to find a good rhythm to my work. Doing flood claims was quite an undertaking for my first storm. During the first 2-3 weeks, they days were filled with appointments and then writing claims in the evening.
Customer Service Inspections
I had 28 claims to process after all the give and take was done and the smoke cleared. I was told to hurry up and get out and introduce myself, shake hands, and assess the damage as fast as I could. They called it a CSI visit, or Customer Service Inspection. This was to help them know what was going on and put them at ease that someone was taking care of them. Then we were to go back for a second visit and do the final inspections.
I scheduled all my CSI visits in 2 hour time slots and only 4 a day since I was still learning the process. I could have easily scheduled them closer together though, since I did spend some time waiting between appointments. That played to my advantage, however. When damage was minimal, I was actually able to scope the loss on the first visit, which happened about 30% of the time.
At the CSI visit I’d schedule the Final Scope. So, after 3 weeks, all the CSI and final visits were complete. All that was left was to file the claims. Word of wisdom…TAKE GOOD NOTES.
With wind storms they say to visit the claim and file it in the same day. With flood, I suppose it may be possible, but didn’t work out that way for me. I had good pictures and with the magnitude of the claims, it was hard to forget.
Pictures, Pictures, and Pictures.
They will save you every time. Always take more than you need and pick what you want when it’s over.
Getting Paid
It started to feel rewarding around week 2 when I started tracking how much was billed for the day. It wasn’t uncommon to bill $1-2,000 a day! That did a lot to boost my ego and drive me to finish strong. At the end the billing got bigger each day as my efficiency got better.
The thing to remember is that it pays the same no matter if you do it in 3 weeks or 8 weeks. So the way to make money in this business is to be thorough and efficient. Do everything once and correct. I had a good storm and made a lot of money in the process. I’m curious to see how I did when they review my claims.
John Bowers has a background in construction and decided to add claims adjusting to create a new income source. Follow John’s journey as he shares his experiences on training and deployment.