Josh Ehmke

We’re here today again with Josh Ehmke and Jeremy Traasdahl of One Claim Solution. Today, we’re going to do a little bit of a question-answer type of a deal where we’re going to kind of talk about some of the frequently asked questions that we get a lot. So, with that, let’s go.

Jeremy Traasdahl

All right. First question. ‘Do you do collections’?

Josh Ehmke

Does One Claim Solution do collections? So, this is a good question. And the reason I like it is because there legally is a difference between collections and billing. One Claim Solution is a billing agency. There are certain times where we will get involved with homeowners when, you know, checks are sent to the homeowner and we’ll try to work with the homeowner quickly in order to avoid them getting those funds and spending them, but One Claim Solution is not a collection agency. 

We do not receive invoices or bills once they become due or past due. And so we really try to avoid the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act being triggered in any way so that we can really maintain a pretty strong position on the front end of the claim and push it through as a billing agency.

That’s where we focus, that’s where we specialize. Those are our strengths. So that’s where we stay. So no, One Claim Solution is not a collection agency. It is a billing agency. We do work with collection agencies and have the ability to kick a file over when it needs to go that route, whether it’s to, you know, foreclose on properties, file liens, or garnish wages, report to credit bureaus, those types of things. But that’s all done through the collection agencies that we might work with. But OCS is not a collection agency. All right Jeremy, are you ready? 

Jeremy Traasdahl

This will be a good one. Yeah, I’ll take one word. 

Josh Emke

‘Do you prepare invoices?’

Jeremy Traasdahl

No. No, so OCS does not prepare invoices We never have, since the beginning, since our inception. It’s not something that I think we ever wanted to do. There’s a lot of estimating services out there. Estimating services oftentimes will just write the invoice and they’ll give them back to the contractor for approval. We have never written invoices as we are doing the negotiating and the justifying of these invoices. We have always felt that the person or the company that is doing the work, that knows the work that was done, is in the best position to write the invoice. So we take it after invoice writing stage, they’ll send it to us and we’ll submit it to the carrier and negotiate what they have billed, because they are the ones, again, that know exactly what was or wasn’t done on any given job.

Josh Ehmke

Yeah, absolutely. We’ve always shied away from anything to do with the invoice writing or creation. To kind of highlight what you were saying, is we don’t know what was done. We can’t write an accurate invoice because we don’t know. And so we’ve always stayed away from that.

Next question, Jeremy. ‘What if I am a franchisee? Can I still work with OCS?’

Jeremy Traasdahl

Absolutely. It’s going to really depend on what type of franchise you’re a part of. Different franchises operate differently. We do service franchisees and we’ve been very successful in doing that. And we’ve had some experiences where we weren’t exactly set up the way that we should have been set up.

Or I guess we should… We didn’t set up the expectations with different franchisees, and it was a situation where it wasn’t a good fit, and we were able to just let them know that it wasn’t a good fit, and we moved on. So it’s really important if you’re a franchisee to like, let’s make sure that we get ahead of all the questions to make sure we’re a good fit because we are for some and we are not for some.

It’s not as clear as like ‘I’m an independent restoration contractor,’ right? That we fit all day, every day. Franchisees, because of the different regulations of different franchises, it becomes a bit more complex. Doesn’t mean it’s a no, because we successfully do it, or we have. Currently, we do it for two or three franchisees and have been successful in that.

Josh Ehmke

Yeah, absolutely.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Okay, you ready? ‘I do a lot of commercial jobs. Can OCS do that billing?’

Josh Ehmke

Commercial jobs. So it’s the same insurance policies that apply, same insurance rules, regulations. There are different federal regulations that might — even state regulations that might apply to commercial jobs — but yes, OCS can do commercial jobs.

We do them regularly. A lot of times the commercial jobs are a lot, a lot more complex, a lot higher dollar value. And so, contractors do ask this question a lot, can you do commercial jobs. And absolutely we can. I think the one of the larger ones that we’ve done is upwards of a half million dollars.

But we get a hundred plus thousand-dollar ones regularly, and we’re just as successful working on those ones as we are on the small, residential losses. So absolutely, we have those skills and ability to do it. Same justifications apply. No cheating!

Jeremy Traasdahl

I can’t remember the question…

Josh Ehmke

You get the softball question now. You ready for it? All right. ‘I depend heavily on TPA/program work — can you help me with their billing requirements?’

Jeremy Traasdahl

No. No, this is definitely something that’s outside of our lane. Oftentimes with TPA work or program vendor work, or preferred vendor work, whatever you would call any of those type of work, they have heavy rules about what you can or cannot bill for, what you can or cannot, have it — well, I guess bill for, have your invoices include. Even in your contracts, a lot of times the contracts are regulated as to how you can contract with your insured, or the insured. It’s definitely not something that we do. I do not foresee us ever doing anything in the program or preferred vendor space. 

Josh Ehmke

There’s not a lot for us to do there.

Jeremy Traasdahl

No. Oh, yeah. I hope this is a hard one. It is. Oh, that is a hard one, have fun dancing. Okay. ‘Will OCS increase my collections?’

Josh Ehmke

Yes. That’s the easy answer, right? And I say that because historically, OCS has been successful in helping a contractor collect more for their services. And we can back that up with, you know, 8+ years of data on that.

So, yes, OCS has the ability to do that, but a lot of times it also depends on when a contractor signs with us, there’s a vetting process. We like to make sure that we are a good fit for every contractor that we bill for. And part of that vetting process is we go through, you know, a handful of their invoices, some of their history on their own performance to see where we can help out and help them through that process.

So yes, the answer is yes. We can help a contractor receive more and work with them through that process when we bring on a new contractor.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. And again, in addition we can only control so much. We will be the most educated negotiators. We will be the most up to date, in terms of the IICRC standards, the OSHA standards, we will be really good at our job, but it’s going to really be dependent on how well documented the contractor’s invoices are, how justified the contractor’s invoices are, because if they give us a reason, then we’ll absolutely go to bat for that reason. But it really is heavily dependent on — and we’ll set contractors up, we’ll help contractors get set up properly to get paid what is owed and what should be paid on any and all jobs. But it’s going to make sure that they’re really good — the ones that are required to do it, you know?

I would say we’ve seen this actually with a lot of our clients. There’s a couple of things that help them get paid. Like a lot of times clients, they hear this ‘three trade rule,’ right, from carriers on like, can I get paid overhead and profit? And that’s one of those things when you can educate a client on and say, well, we haven’t seen anything about a three-trade rule, but it’s this misconception because of carriers who have said that there’s this three trade rule regarding overhead and profit.

Another one would be like service call, right? Like we in my mind, I know the one carrier who’s like, ‘I will never pay a service call.’ But it doesn’t mean it’s not owed, right? And it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be paid, and it doesn’t mean it’s not allowed to be billed. But there’s one carrier… but now all the other carriers pay it, so I don’t understand why the one carrier decides that they don’t have to, right? And so there are line items like that where it’s like, hey, these are the things that you should be billing for and you should be doing on every job because these are things that, frankly, you’re regulated to do, you should be required to do, it’s reasonable to do. And when they do those things and they really take the approach of, oh, I want to be as dialed as possible, it just gets them paid more because they’re dialed in their documentation, and they’re dialed in what they’re supposed to be doing.

Josh Ehmke

Absolutely. And, you know, you talking about that kind of brings into mind one of our contractors that we’ve been with almost from the very beginning, you know, he’s been with us for — literally since the beginning, eight years. And he was just about to quit the industry — older guy, kind of fed up with everything going on and tired of trying to justify his invoices to adjusters that didn’t want to hear it, period — and we were able to kind of come in and, and help offload that from him to where we were able to take on that insurance billing for his company and he was able to focus on the aspect of the industry that he enjoys. He enjoyed his interactions with homeowners and helping them in a time of need but hated the interactions with the insurance companies. And we were able to take that on and do it in a way for him where we actually did increase his collections just because he hated it so much. He would just kind of take what insurance companies would be willing to pay and be done. And with the availability that OCS provides and our training and knowledge and justifications and regulations we were able to help increase the contractor’s collections. 

Jeremy Traasdahl

That was a good story. 

Josh Ehmke

Thanks, dog. ‘Will OCS get me paid faster?’

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yes. Yeah, the reason that OCS will help you get paid faster is because we’ll make sure that, again, the contracts that you’re using is a big part of how you get paid. Making sure they’re paying the right party. When you can get the contractor paid directly, it’s always faster, which that’s our first trigger to be able to improve speed to collections. And then, frankly, it’s no secret in the industry that if you’re available when the adjuster wants to negotiate a bill and you are available to do it, they want that off their desk as fast as you want that off their desk. The problem is playing phone tag with the adjusters, and then it goes back to the bottom of the line, back to the bottom of the line, and all of a sudden your days to pay increases. Now, the only time — and I’ve seen us — our day to first payment is in the 40 days range right now. Typically, that’s way faster than everybody else. We had maybe one or two potential clients that have maybe said like, ‘oh, I’m paid in 20 days.’ You know, I have yet to see that proven. And so I really feel very confident that we will just be faster in terms of your AR than you have been.

Josh Ehmke

Follow up question. Can OCS prove it?

Jeremy Traasdahl

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’s one thing that OCS does really well is, our analytics and even our dashboard and the ability for a contractor to hop in and see any claim at any time throughout the stage in the process. And then we document days to first pay so they’ll be able to see what their current average days to first payment is on any claim. And so, it’s — we are hyper transparent in our analytics, our reporting and our dashboard, very transparent. So, they’re able to see. One of the challenges that, I think contractors have, is they don’t have the software that we use. And so they’re guessing oftentimes like, oh, it seems like maybe it’s a month or two. And well, that’s a big difference in our world, the difference in 30 and 60 days. I mean, we’re at 40 and I’m like, we’re driving that down. We’re trying to drive that even faster, right? And so, the first the first thing that OCS is, I would say is very good at, is being very transparent and analytical on how we perform.

Josh Ehmke

A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And you talked about the software that we use, right? It’s, you know, OCS uses a software that we have really kind of created and developed over the history of OCS, and every tweak comes with thousands of claims of history and experience behind it, driving those changes. And so it’s a software that is proprietary to OCS, and it is something that absolutely helps drive our success at what we do. And that’s a huge, valuable tool that OCS has that contractors get to benefit from, on that as well, so very good.

‘Will OCS settle every claim?’

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah, it’s along the same lines of what we just answered. They will not, we will not settle every claim. Our goal is to settle every claim. We settle a lot of claims. We do also have alternative ways to go get paid on claims that, frankly, should have been paid more, right? And we have a lot of avenues that we take to get you paid more, to get contractors paid more, on claims that were frankly low paid. But our goal is to settle all of them on the first time ‘round. That is not a realistic expectation because, again, you’re dealing with different carriers and different adjusters within the carriers, and frankly, they’re not coordinated enough to be in control of every one of their adjusters to pay out the fair and reasonable amount.

And so, it’s such a difficult concept to say we’ll settle every claim. But what we will say is that we will not just close down claims that get paid in a low manner, in a non-settled manner. We’ll go after the balances on those.

Josh Ehmke

That’s right. We still try to bring the accountability to the claims adjusting and process overall.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. ‘How much time should I plan on spending with OCS during the onboarding process? And frankly, what does that even look like?’

Josh Ehmke

We’ve talked about the onboarding process briefly here and there with some of the other questions. You know, where we try to establish the baseline, we review documents to make sure that you have everything that you need as part of your original package that goes into the carrier, right? 

So the onboarding process, it involves a few different things that we try to do, a few different goals. Number one, kind of learn each other, see how the fit is, reviewing documentation, your work authorization. We look at your invoices, we look at what type of supporting documentation you have for those invoices, how good are your photos, you know, dry logs, those types of things. The overall process for onboarding, it can vary by contractor. Some contractors that come to us are not very sophisticated at all. And maybe they might be a newer contractor. And so they’re very willing to change their processes to kind of work with us and where we typically go with a lot of our documentation. 

Other contractors have a great deal of experience in the industry already or are very large contractors, or might be a franchisee, you know, that has certain parameters that are set on them by the franchisor. And so it’s working through those things. But typically, you can see the process, I think we’ve had it as fast as contractors getting us claims within a matter of days. 

You know, typically, it doesn’t go much past that. You’re looking at maybe a week or two, but it’s really dependent on the contractor and how quickly they want to move on implementing some of these things. And it’s a leap of faith for contractors so often, dude, to be able to just say, ‘hey, here’s the lifeblood to my whole business that I’ve worked so hard for, I’m going to trust you guys with this, take it and run with it’. 

And so part of the onboarding process is being able to work with contractors and help them feel comfortable making that move and that transition to an outsourced billing agency and relinquishing some of that control of their billing process. That’s all kind of part of that onboarding thing. And it really is contractor-dependent. We can make the process very quick. But sometimes contractors are a little bit slower to move and implement changes, and to take that leap — because it can be a leap.

Jeremy Traasdahl

All right. ‘Which insurance agencies do you work with?’

Josh Ehmke

Insurance agencies? So, there’s a difference between an insurance agency and insurance company, right? We don’t work with insurance agencies. That’s your salesmen, you know, that are — they’re selling policies, right? We work directly with insurance companies, and we work with all insurance companies. One of the things that we found out very early on is that the relationship between contractor and insurance company is adversarial by nature, right? A contractor wants to be paid as much money as possible, as fast as possible.

Carriers, by nature, want to pay as little as possible, as slowly as possible. That’s just the way that it is. And so we understand that this relationship is adversarial, and OCS works very hard… You know, we understand contractors are in business. They want to be in business for the long run. They don’t want to be put out of business.

OCS likewise wants to be in business for the long run, right? The long haul, we’re here for it. And so the way to do that is to try to build and establish relationships with carriers. Typically it’s adjusters at the carrier. And we have been very successful at doing just that. There are many carriers that we work very, very well with, where we have certain contacts there, where we call them up, we know them personally through years and constant phone calls, where we know about weddings and babies coming and those types of things. 

And so we’re able to work well with those types of adjusters. And as everybody also knows, there are certain adjusters at every insurance company as well that they’re just mean humans, and grumpy, and will always be mean and grumpy, and their whole primary objective in life is to pay as little as possible, as slowly as possible. There will always be those, and there’s ways for OCS to handle those types of adjusters, and we know which ones they are. We’ve kept very documented records for every claim that we’ve ever processed from day one of this company. We can go back and look at that. We keep notes on every adjuster — what their hot buttons are. We’re able to recognize trends very quickly at each company so that we know how to most efficiently work with those companies in order to process these claims, too. So yes, we have thousands and thousands and thousands of claims worth of history and experience working with every single insurance company.

Jeremy Traasdahl

You know, I think that that insurance carriers and even adjusters, I think they all have a job to do, right? And so the outliers, I think, are the ones that are just mean. But I don’t think that’s their intent, but there are them. All of us who are probably listening to this podcast can think of one in our head, but I do think that they’re the outliers.

I think ultimately they’re trying to accomplish their job. Some may be ignorant as to what’s owed, some may be trained improperly to what’s owed. We overcome both of those scenarios, and then ultimately, our goal is to get to relationships that will both benefit us and the carrier in terms of speed, right? I do think adjusters need these off their desks. They’ve got to get them processed. We are more than willing and happy to get that initiative flowing at the adjuster level as well because we want speed as well. 

Josh Ehmke

Absolutely. Absolutely. 

Jeremy Traasdahl

Thanks for watching this podcast. You can find out more information at our website at www.oneclaimsolution.com. Feel free to contact us, with any questions or if you want more information.