MANNING CLAIM SERVICES, LLC
TRANSIT AND CASUALTY CLAIM EXPEDITERS
POBOX 212
ALLENDALE, NJ 07401 web:
Member CPPC email:
Telephone (201) 612-8670
Fax (201) 612-0672
67th Installment From the Other Side of the Desk
The Final Touch
While I was switching back and forth from 2 different TV shows (one was Under Cover Boss and the other was about a charter school in NYC) I came up with the idea for this article.
The final touch! Wow, I always thought that was a great name for a repair firm.
There actually is a repair firm in Connecticut with this name, always loved that name. Has kind of a neat ring to it – The Final Touch! The name captures everything a repair firm is about that is in the transit claims business. We are the final people to touch these things after they have been moved or coming out of storage.
Theidea struck me while I was watching the Under Cover Boss segment with the CEO of United Van Lines. He went in with a packing crew & road driver to see how that was done then visited a claims office to see how that was done (Linda Picard was just wonderful!!). I thought, it probably would have behooved him to go out on the road with a repair firm as well. He would have seen the last contact his company had with a customer. And the last contact, inevitably if there is a claim, is the repair firm. The final touch.
Many adjusters / claim reps who have been in this business for a while know exactly what a repair firm has to do when they send them in as the final representative of their company. Many new to the business, don’t. The repair firm is the one that is selling your company back to your customer.
Most shippers aren’t very happy by the time the repair firm goes in. They paid for a move or they’ve been relocated by their company and they don’t want to deal with a repair firm. The inconvenience - the time needed to set aside for appointments, the disruption of their schedules, their items being taken away from them, etc. They want normalcy, not a repair firm.
This is where the 2nd TV show I was flipping in and out of comes in. The 60 minute segment was on charter schools. This particular schools principal was hiring teachers at $125,000. per year to teach at this school. No particular contract signed or benefits, per say – just the great salary he was offering them. This charter schools credo was “Good Enough is Just not Good Enough”. What they meant by that credo was that all too often people tend to say Well, that’s good enough, we can move onto the next thing. This school felt kids get left behind with that kind of thinking. The principal demanded excellence from his teachers and the Good Enough phrase just drove him crazy.
Connecting all of this to the repair firm (and my shop has been guilty of this in the past), something will be repaired in the shop, one of the guys will notice that the color is off a little bit or youcan see where the repair was done and he’ll say:“Well, that’s good enough.” I’ve reacted just like the CharterSchool Principal saying
“Good Enough is not Good Enough for me and it’s not Good Enough in this business”. Reminding my techs that these people aren’t paying for this repair – this situation happened under adverse conditions and that it can’t be Good Enough, it has to be perfect!
Something to bear in mind when you are the Final Touch on a claim.