3 Ways You Can Get Blacklisted from IA Firms and How to Avoid It

“When you communicate with people included in any of these levels, you need to be sincere, patient, and professional—even if they fail to do the same.” This will prevent you from getting blacklisted.

In our field, excellent customer service is the bare minimum of what we should convey in our communication. The need for this comes in three different levels. We need to express impeccable customer service to:

Our own customer (the independent adjusting firm)
Our customer’s client (usually the insurance carrier)
The policyholder, on behalf of our client’s customer

Failing to provide great customer service to any of these levels can be catastrophic to your relationship. If you’re rude or insincere to a policyholder, the carrier can receive your report whom in turn reports it back to the adjusting company. And just like that, your failure is on display for all three levels.

Or, you could have great in-person relationships with policyholders but found yourself in a spat with a staff adjuster. And the staff adjuster relays back your spat to their vendor management department. It is then ultimately reported to your client, the adjusting company. Now, your client sees you compromising their relationship with their own client. That’s bad news!

But I believe, too many uneducated independent adjusters land their own clients only to provide their own staff with awful customer service by bickering and crap response times.

As your brother in claims, I don’t ever want you to be that person. When you communicate with people included in any of these levels, you need to be sincere, patient, and professional even if they fail to do the same.