Job ads for claims professionals often focus on hard skills. Employers are looking for years of experience or want specific credentials or knowledge of essential programs. While these requirements are understandable, soft skills are also a critical part of the job. In particular, it’s important to hire and train for empathy in claims handling.
Why Empathy in Claims Handling Matters
Claimants typically want their claims settled fast and to receive the best settlement amount possible. Therefore, a successful claims handler needs to be able to accurately assess the loss along with the available coverage to determine an accurate settlement offer as quickly as possible.
However, this is only half the story.
Claimants have just experienced some sort of loss. In some cases, it’s a highly-traumatic loss – perhaps their home has burned down or they’ve been in a terrifying car crash. They’re contacting their insurer for help. While the nature of that help is primarily financial, they may also need a sympathetic ear and a kind word. If claims handlers treat them like a number, claimants may not feel like you’re taking care of them.
And that’s assuming the claim goes well in other regards. Even with a skilled claims handler and the best tools available, it’s not always possible to give claimants what they want. In some cases, coverage may have limits or exclusions that affect the settlement offer. In others, there may be unavoidable delays – for example, because repair shops have backlogs or because specialty parts need to be ordered. In these types of scenarios, empathetic communication makes a world of difference.
Understanding Empathy and Its Role in Claims
Psychology Today defines empathy as “the ability to recognize, understand, and share the thoughts and feelings of another person, animal, or fictional character.” Empathy is crucial for forming relationships and enabling helping behaviors.
Simply put, when you exercise empathy, you put yourself in another person’s shoes. For claims professionals, this is crucial.
From the perspective of the claims professional, a car crash is just another day’s work. From the perspective of the claimant, it’s a potentially traumatic and possibly life-altering event. If claims professionals become callous to the hardship claimants are experiencing, they may be unable to establish a rapport or gain trust.
Can People Learn Empathy?
It’s common to think of hard skills as being learned but soft skills as innate. This isn’t exactly true, but there is some reality behind this idea. It’s possible to learn soft skills, but it isn’t always easy. According to the British Psychological Society, Bill Hester, an expert in occupational psychology, says soft skills are often the most difficult skills to master.
And that’s assuming someone wants to master soft skills like empathy. As an article in Entrepreneur explains, it’s only possible to learn soft skills if a person truly commits.
How to Train and Hire for Empathy
Since empathy is a critical part of claims handling, it makes sense to train and hire for empathy just as you would for any other essential skill.
- Attract empathetic job seekers. Include soft skills in your job ads to attract workers who want this kind of work. For example, you could list one of the requirements as being an empathetic listener with good communication skills who will be able to build a strong rapport with claimants going through a difficult time.
- Assess empathy during job interviews. When you meet with job candidates, design some of the interview questions to assess empathy. For example, give hypothetical scenarios involving claimants dealing with difficult situations and ask how the candidate would respond. Indeed has some interview questions related to empathy.
- Provide coaching. Even workers who are generally empathetic may struggle in certain situations. Provide coaching and roleplay exercises to help develop empathy further.
- Build a culture of empathy. Ask yourself: are you empathetic to the problems of your claims handlers? Company culture has a big impact on how workers interact with others. By building an empathetic company culture, you’ll encourage empathy in all interactions.
- Make sure your claim handlers aren’t overwhelmed. It’s hard to show empathy for others when you’re overwhelmed yourself. If your claims handlers can barely keep up with their workloads, they may lack the time to listen to claimants and respond kindly.
Teaching someone to be empathetic is difficult, but teaching someone to use VCA claims management software is easy. Claim handlers will save as much as two hours a day, freeing up time for empathetic communication with claimants. Learn more.
