Josh Ehmke
Welcome back everyone to another segment of the OCS podcast. I’m Josh Ehmke, co-founder and general counsel to One Claim Solution. In today’s segment, we’re going to talk a little bit about the people of One Claim Solution and what makes them who they are and how One Claim Solution uses its people and really relies on its people in order to drive our outcomes or our goals for our customers and what we try to do to help enable our people. So thanks for joining me today. Let’s get into it.

So lately we’ve been talking about people versus processes versus technology. And like I said, today we’re going to focus a little bit more on the people side of that.

So when Jeremy and I set out to establish and start One Claim Solution, one of the things that we saw as being a problem in the industry was the high turnover that contractors were having with their internal accounts receivable departments and being able to help keep people in a position where they were feeling successful, where they were feeling happy, or they were feeling fulfilled in their careers. And it’s a huge problem in this industry for contractors, is to be able to find that type of longevity. And so with One Claim Solution, we’re able to help kind of offset some of that headache that contractors have.

So that’s one of the things that we seek to try to solve for our contractors is to be able to outsource that headache to One Claim Solution, right? And not just the headache, but the process of being able to help drive longevity for our people here and in that process. So as every contractor knows, dealing with insurance companies is one of the least favorite things to do. And so it’s not very pleasant a lot of times. While we try to make a dynamicable process, as I’ve said in the past, you know, it doesn’t matter how nice we are or how pretty of a bow we put on our contractors’ stuff or invoices in order to submit it to the carriers, sometimes you just have mean adjusters that are just grumpy. And being able to help our people still feel motivated to come to work and be able to deal with those types of people every day, it’s an adversarial relationship by nature. Insurance companies don’t want to pay, our contractors want to be paid, and so it’s an adversarial relationship by nature. It can be draining. And so one of the things that we look at when we are bringing people on to OCS is, do they have a little bit of a thick skin? Are they open to learning about different processes that we have that help establish them and set them up for the best success possible? And to be able to really feel fulfilled in what they’re doing here. Because as our people stay longer, they become better. They become more efficient, more knowledgeable, and better experienced on how to deal with insurance companies and their adjusters in order to drive a certain outcome for our customers. And so really, a lot of the processes or even the technology that One Claim Solution will try to develop and implement is really to establish a situation where our people, our employees, feel empowered. Where they feel, again, motivated, where they feel happy coming to work, even in a situation where they know it’s going to be an adversarial phone call or an adversarial situation. And so giving them the right tools is important, but also having the right people in place that can be able to separate themselves from the equation, know that they are here to do a specific thing, and really help drive them and motivate them to understand that, hey, what we’re doing here is a good thing. What we’re doing is trying to get a contractor paid who has gone out of their way and has done a really good thing for somebody that was in a really bad spot. And so really being able to work with our people and find people that understand that and are motivated by that is a good thing for us to be able to try to do. And it’s important for us to be able to find those people in order to set them up for success for our contractors.

Because One Claim Solution put such an emphasis on hiring the right people from the beginning and being able to determine, hey, maybe this person isn’t the right person, and responding to that quickly. I think that that puts OCS in kind of a unique situation compared to a lot of other companies that might be in the industry or even OCS’s ability to recognize very quickly which people are right for this type of a job. Again, it’s not the most pleasant, glamorous job in the world, right? Yeah, you’re coming in and getting kind of yelled at on the phone sometimes by insurance companies. Being able to help identify the people and, again, their strengths on where they succeed and where they might struggle and being able to capitalize on those and maneuver is something that, because OCS has been around for eight, nine years and we’ve maintained and developed this data system that we have and our processes and we’ve got our management team in place that are all very skilled at being able to recognize these things. It definitely places OCS in kind of a unique situation when it comes to our people. We’re very proud of the team that we have put in place here. It’s been a team that’s been developed since the beginning. Some of our employees have been with us since literally 2016, since we started the company. And we pride ourselves on that fact that when we find the right people, we take care of the right people and we feel like we enable them in order to feel fulfilled. Feel fulfilled in their job. Kind of a funny way to say that.

But that’s really our goal, is as our people are happy, as they gain that sense of fulfillment in their lives and feel like they’re accomplishing something good, that’s what’s important. Work is a huge part of everybody’s life and for it not to be a place that’s enjoyable or a place where they feel motivated to come, you’re going to have high turnover. And don’t get me wrong, that still happens and we are able to identify that and move. But for the most part, OCS has been able to develop pretty good process of finding the right people and being able to develop those people and give them the tools necessary to succeed in their jobs.

So as every contractor has experienced, and maybe why you’re even listening to this podcast or watching it is because you’ve experienced some unique behavior or some uniqueness to this industry that is different from other industries.

One of the things that I go back to constantly is the interesting relationship between insurance companies, their policy holders, and contractors.

While the insurance company and the contractor have a common customer together, i.e. the policy holder, how they deal with that customer is oftentimes very, very different.

As I’ve been in the industry for the last 10 plus years, one of the things that I’ve noticed that is fascinating to me is that a lot of times homeowners or policy holders, they’re very easily persuaded that their carrier, their insurance company is there to literally protect them, to keep them safe and do the best thing possible for the policy holder. In theory, that’s great. That’s what we all pay our policy premiums for, is to have that type of protection. In reality, that’s not how it is. Some insurance companies are better than others. A lot of times some adjusters are better than others. But really, the contractor’s goal, as you know, is in order to step in, solve an emergency situation for your customers, do it in a way that puts them back to a situation that they were in before the loss happened.

You oftentimes are the ones answering the phone call at 2 in the morning, having to leave the Thanksgiving dinner table in order to go and respond to one of these phone calls. You’re the ones that are responding at the drop of a hat for these customers, and yet a lot of times the carrier is able to convince the customer, as you know, that you’re the bad guy in the situation. That’s one of the things that’s very frustrating for me to see over the last several years is that situation. But as we have our people here, and they’re able to kind of see that that’s part of the process or part of the game that a carrier might play, helps our people feel like they have a little bit more of a purpose, that they have a reason to be here to help the situation out and help level that playing field for our contractors to be paid. They can step in and oftentimes be able to remove a lot of the emotion from the equation. They were not the contractor that was there on site at 2 in the morning. They were not the contractor that had to get up from the Thanksgiving dinner table in order to go respond to the phone call.

And so we’re able to step back, look at it from a more objective standpoint, and really take that emotion out of the process in order to reach a better outcome with the carrier for our contractors. And so, yes, I would say that the insurance billing industry, especially on the homeowner side of things, for a lot of these homeowners, you know, they’re not a lot, pretty much all homeowners. Their biggest investment they will ever have is their home. And so when their home is damaged, they’re in a very hard situation, and they feel like they have their backs up against the wall. And so being able to help kind of understand that for these customers and try to fight hard on the back end for not just our contractors, but also the homeowners, so they’re not the ones having to come out of pocket an additional amount on top of having to mess with all the headache of getting their house put back together, really helps motivate our people here. And being able to care like that is something that we strive hard to do for our customers, is find those type of people that can care and understand that dichotomy in that situation, and be able to use that to help drive their performance.

A little bit about the relationships between contractors and homeowners and insurance companies, and each one of those relationships is different. Even for us here at OCS, our people have to treat each one of those relationships differently. And so we do have different teams specifically developed and trained to deal with each one of those individuals, or each one of those groups, right? We have people that only deal with contractors to make sure that our contractors are getting what they need from OCS, whether it’s reports, whether it’s information on specific claims, gathering information from those contractors. We also have a team that’s developed and in place that deals primarily with homeowners. If the homeowner ever gets a check or if the homeowner has questions, we have to… That’s our contractor’s customer, and we understand that. And our people are trained to treat that customer, that homeowner, with kid gloves and make sure that we do everything that we can in order to help our contractors looking like the good guy that they are in the whole situation and the policy holder or the homeowner understand kind of the process on what’s going on. Help them recognize that, you know, it’s the contractor that’s actually been there every day trying to help the customer get back into a made-hole position. And being able to work with them in a specific manner is important.

Then we also have our team that’s specifically developed and trained that deals with only the insurance company. And so, yes, very different groups of people that you’re trying to work with, whether it’s homeowners, contractors, or insurance companies. And the way that you’re going to deal with each of those groups has to be catered to what the goal is with that group. And that’s something that we’ve developed in some of the processes that we’ve put in place here at OCS is to be able to respond to that unique challenge in this industry.

Thanks again for joining me today in discussing the people of OCS and what makes OCS what it is. We do have great processes. We are implementing great changes in technology and responding there. But ultimately, what makes OCS OCS is our people. And we’re very proud of the team that we’ve developed here and continue to develop and train. And so, huge shout-out, number one, to them. Appreciate everybody here at OCS. But hopefully, our contractors also recognize what OCS is able to do through its team that we’ve developed for each one of our contractors.