Everyone wants their freight claims processed efficiently and payments made promptly, but what about the overall claim count? Data insights are the key driver behind decision-making in a competitive market, but many freight claims management services only focus on the opening and closing of your freight claims.
Successfully shipping undamaged goods can positively impact your customer’s experience. While your teams take every step to ensure the delivery meets your customer’s expectations, some things might be out of their hands. Improper handling by carriers or adverse events such as storms, natural disasters, accidents, and a range of dangers exist in the transportation industry — and sometimes, deliveries are simply unpredictable.
Having a comprehensive process to mitigate the negative impact of the customer experience is critical. Part of that process is the management of your freight claims allowing you to solve these claim issues quickly and effectively and back to quality service. Rockfarm Supply Chain Solutions can help you with freight management solutions designed to get you focused on your business and improve the customer experience through our Visiclaims service.
Our Claims Service Team
Visiclaims provides complete visibility at every step of the claims process while working with you to identify exactly which key indicators can point out useful insights hiding in your freight claims data. Unsure what to look for? Let our team of experts assist you in discovering where the real savings are.
Our claims service team provides both oversight and execution in support of your claims management process. Whether it’s data insights, visibility, or simply an organized claims processing tool, we can customize our solution service to meet your needs.
Freight claims management services handle claims for you, so you can transform a negative experience with your customer into a positive one while saving money and time. When you outsource freight claims management, you can create a system for easy contact and resolution, as well as a process for keeping track of claims. Freight claims management also ensures no claims slip through the cracks, keeping all clear visibility of potential causes allowing for permanent corrective actions to take hold.
How Does It Work?
When someone makes a claim, there is a point of contact at an organization or a number that suppliers or other stakeholders can call when there is a problem. Once suppliers or stakeholders call or someone files a report, the claims process can begin. The goal is to verify damages or losses and resolve the claim quickly and accurately to the satisfaction of our customers and your company’s freight policy.
The Benefits of Freight Claims Management Services
Rockfarm offers Visiclaims, a one-stop solution for ensuring your claims get handled in the most professional and timely way possible. We also provide an added benefit — Visiclaims collects and helps you target data, so you understand why claims occur. This way, you can target repeat claims and even find ways to reduce the number of claims filed.
Visiclaims uses software and technology to help you work your way seamlessly through a claim while the system gathers data you can use about claims. Visiclaims warehouses all your freight claims data, so you can analyze the data to determine how and why claimable damages and losses have occurred. Through this approach, Visiclaims lets you optimize your freight claim handling and helps you address any issues that may be contributing to claims.
Our process also mitigates claims on your behalf, helping you resolve disputes with carriers and ensuring you have a team of professionals by your side when you need one. Visiclaims handles all the process steps, so you only have to worry about getting back to business and depositing any checks resulting from a claim into your account.
It’s important to understand which conditions are most likely to contribute to freight claims, so your company can find ways to adjust those conditions or even avoid them. Freight claims are demands made by a company or individual who shipped a product with a carrier. If the product arrives at its destination damaged or never arrives at all, the shipper or consignee can request financial reimbursement from the carrier.
Our team of freight claims management experts will provide a monthly report giving you visibility into the factors contributing to your damaged or lost freight. We track the data points that will best assist you regarding modal considerations, alternative product packaging methods, and carrier-specific mishandling — ultimately helping you reduce claims. You decide which factors will provide the most useful insight in your monthly reporting.
Our consultants can help you focus your efforts if you are unsure what to look for in freight claims management software.
How your shipments arrive at their destination can have a significant impact on the number of freight claims you receive. You will want freight claims management for all modes, including air, truck, rail, and maritime. Within each category, there are sub-categories, such as truckload and less-than-truckload for shipments made by truck.
One way to get a better understanding of how modal considerations affect freight claims is to look at the chart to the left. The chart depicts a clear impression that the client’s Less-Than-Truckload (LTL) shipments are more likely to require a claim to be filed.
Now, consider the fact that the company above ships roughly 50-50 between the number of LTL and truckload (TL). Data tracking shows they are experiencing significantly more damaged and lost claims in their LTL mode. This data insight may facilitate discussion, prompting the question, “Should we consider a modal change?”
In this case, the answer is likely yes, as the company can stand to save a considerable amount of money by reducing or even eliminating LTL loads.
When packaging engineers consider the best methods to secure and protect products, they evaluate the highest risk to product safety and work their way down, all while considering the cost. That being said, once the optimal protection method is agreed upon, little if any re-evaluation takes place.
This is certainly not due to a lack of desire on behalf of the company to optimize their packaging methods, rather, it is much more likely the case that a company does not have visibility to data tracking factors of claims such as:
Specific product type.
Damage type and location.
The extent of the damage.
Lack of packaging protection.
Understanding how products become damaged is vital to the optimization of product packaging. Wouldn’t you want to know if you could spend a nickel on cardboard to prevent reshipping a product while your customer waits?
Working with freight claims handling management software provides you with access to these data insights, so you can get answers to all of your questions such as:
Were the damaged products palletized using banding or shrink wrap?
Were the damaged goods protected with foam or exposed to the trailer?
Why are the sides of the machine getting scratched while the hoods are getting dented?
Data insights can help highlight systems you can improve and allow you to investigate what safety measures might work better for your products. Switching materials can help you save money on damages costs, time on claims, and resending products. Your customers will appreciate receiving a well-protected product, helping build trust with them.
As empowering as data insights can be, they can become a challenge or even counter-productive if the story the data tells doesn’t have the right context. With Visiclaims, our team understands the need to identify the driving force behind each variable, as well as the relationship it shares with other factors.
The following conversation illustrates how a trained eye on the data can reveal the truth in the numbers.
Client:
Client: “I can’t believe how many claims we filed against Carrier C! Sure, they haul more shipments than both Carrier A and Carrier B, but they are damaging our product three times more often! Are we sure they are providing us with the highest-quality service?”
When it comes to carrier mishandling, it’s not always as cut and dry as who broke it and how many products did they break. Factors such as the length of the haul or the number of touch-points can greatly increase the risk of damaging products. We can give you the data points that allow you to consider which factors are causing over, short, and damaged (OS&D) trends in your supply chain, clearly spelling out the narrative within the data.
For example, Carrier C might have more damaged shipments, but it is also shipping items further than either Carrier A or B. It’s also handling considerably more shipments. An outsourced freight claims management company will review the data for you and help you make the best decision when it comes to continuing to work with a carrier or deciding to use other companies more frequently.
At the end of the day, Visiclaims data insights can be utilized to optimize your supply chain in a variety of ways. We understand that a change from LTL to TL shipments does not come without cost. Likewise, additional packaging protection typically comes hand-in-hand with an additional packaging expense.
Optimizing your claims management process with Visiclaims can empower you to negate damaged and lost freight claims wherever possible, leading to a more consistent and predictable delivery execution. In your supply chain, predictability translates to efficiency and efficiency to savings, and it doesn’t stop there. When your products arrive in pristine condition and on schedule, it provides your customer with peace of mind, knowing that your company is a consistent and reliable source of high-quality products.
Optimize Your Supply Chain in a Variety of Ways With Our Freight Claims Management Software
At the end of the day, Visiclaims data insights can be utilized to optimize your supply chain in a variety of ways. We understand that a change from LTL to TL shipments does not come without cost. Likewise, additional packaging protection typically comes hand-in-hand with an additional packaging expense.
That being said, optimizing your claims management process with Visiclaims can empower you to negate damaged & lost freight claims wherever possible, leading to a more consistent and predictable delivery execution. In your supply chain, predictability translates to efficiency and efficiency to savings, and it doesn’t stop there. When your products arrive in pristine condition and on schedule, it provides your customer with peace of mind, knowing that your company is a consistent & reliable source of high-quality products.
Visiclaims freight claims management software is Rockfarm Supply Chain Solution’s cloud-based freight claims management solution. The software helps you file a claim with a transportation company when needed and provides insight into why the claim happened. Using the software lets you settle claims quickly and get paid while illuminating the cause of the issue.
When you work with Rockfarm and our Visiclaims team, you’ll identify the documentation relevant to your claims, as well as factors to track in order to provide the most useful insights in your monthly report. We understand that no two companies are exactly alike, so why would their claims process be?
From start to finish, our freight claims management software works to save you money, keep your operation productive and minimize the hassle when the unexpected happens. We do this by offering three tiers of freight claims management. Based on the needs of your organization, we can provide any combination of:
The Visiclaims system is a cloud-based freight claims management system software package that takes your team step-by-step through the claims process. We designed Visiclaims to provide complete transparency from the moment you file a claim to its final settlement.
At the same time, it is also a powerful data-gathering tool. Over time, the system will help identify general trends and potential areas of concern, so you make more informed and proactive business decisions. Sophisticated reporting tools put this information in an easy-to-understand format. Visiclaims’ first-tier service is ideal for businesses that want granular control over the claims management process while still benefiting from our suite of advanced, time-saving online tools.
The second tier of our freight management service is mitigation and compliance. We understand that sometimes it is challenging to solve claims. Disputes with carriers are a fact of life — one that can drag out the settlement process and affect your business. Organizations that want to further streamline their claims management process can outsource mitigation and compliance to Visiclaims.
After you’ve used our cargo claims software to create a claim, if there’s an issue, our team will step in to help resolve it unlike tier 1, where the shipper is responsible for following up with the carrier if there is no response. We communicate with carriers on your behalf to resolve any disputes that arise. Ultimately, this saves you money and reduces the amount of paperwork and headaches for your staff.
For the ultimate in ease and convenience, consider outsourcing your freight claims management services entirely to Visiclaims. When an accident happens, give us the details and the relevant documentation. We will produce a claim, present it to the carrier and mitigate on your behalf until we can settle the matter.
The Visiclaims team dedicates itself exclusively to freight claims management — we have the resources and the expertise necessary to achieve a timely and beneficial resolution, no matter the scope of the accident. You’ll save money by minimizing risk and reducing your operating costs, all while freeing up administrative staff to work on more proactive business goals.
The freight claims process follows a relatively standard workflow mandated by the Carmack Amendment. Unfortunately, this tends to cross over into the approach some claims management providers take regarding their integration with clientele.
The team behind Visiclaims understands that your products are unique. We work with you to custom-tailor process features and data tracking to meet your individual needs. Regardless of which tier best fits your company, you still receive a monthly scorecard packed with data specific to your freight claims profile as well as direct access to our Visiclaims portal, where you can track the progress of each claim anywhere that you have an internet connection.
Custom-Tailor Process Features and Data Tracking
The freight claims process follows a relatively standard workflow mandated by the Carmack Amendment. Unfortunately, this tends to cross over into the approach some claims management providers take regarding their integration with clientele. The team behind Visiclaims understands that your products are unique. We work with you to custom-tailor process features and data tracking to meet your individual needs. Regardless of which tier best fits your company, you still receive a monthly scorecard packed with data specific to your freight claims profile as well as direct access to our Visiclaims portal, where you can track the progress of each claim anywhere that you have an internet connection.
Why Outsource Freight Claims Management?
Freight claims are a part of doing business, particularly if your business ships a high volume of goods, but they can also be a hassle to deal with. You’d much rather focus on doing things that will help your company grow and thrive, rather than on chasing down shippers to get them to cover the cost of lost or damaged products.
For that reason, many shippers are turning to outsourced freight claims management. Working with a company such as Rockfarm can take the stress and hassle out of getting reimbursed for lost or damaged shipments.
When you work with outsourced freight claims handling company, you have someone in your corner and on your side. You know that someone is working on your behalf to make sure you get the reimbursement you’re owed. Meanwhile, you are able to focus on the issues that are most important to your company.
Our cloud-based freight claims management system can be customized to your needs and to best benefit your business. We’re happy to work with you to help you choose the tier that is the best fit for your company at the moment. If you ever need to change your approach or move to a different service tier in the future, you’ll be able to do so quickly and easily.
The Benefits of Working With Rockfarm Supply Chain Solutions
Rockfarm Supply Chain Solutions understands that organizations need real-world solutions for their supply chains that are designed to save time and money. The Visiclaims division of Rockfarm Supply Chain Solutions helps your organization do just that. By offering a comprehensive claims management solution, we free up time, money, and resources at your organization you might otherwise need to spend on solving claims.
We take care of the process for you when the unexpected happens, saving you time and frustration and letting you get back to business. At the same time, we improve visibility by arming you with the data you need to help you understand why claims happen and what you can do to reduce the number of claims.
When you are able to streamline processes and cut costs, you can improve your customer experience. Because you understand each carrier and their reputation for delivering your goods, you can communicate more accurately with your clients about shipping expectations. You can strengthen your customer service systems, as well. When clients call with problems or questions, your customer service employees have reliable data they can pull from to tell customers about their orders.
Visiclaims help you identify pain points along the supply chain. Because we work with you from order placement to customers receiving products, Visiclaims can help point out inefficient areas, allowing you to develop more efficient processes to implement instead. When you automate freight claims management, you can provide better services to your customers on several levels, while helping you through the claims process.
The pride of Visiclaims stands on the cornerstone of visibility. With our cloud-based technology, you have 24/7 access to your claims. You can see exactly which step of the process your claim is on, which references have been tracked on each claim, as well as the value being requested for resolution.
The increased visibility can further add to the services you offer your customers. If your clients never received a shipment, Visiclaims can help you communicate with them about the situation. You can offer them more accurate updates as they occur, offering more transparency and boosting the relationship between you and your customers. When you can give them reliable information quickly, they know they can trust you to handle challenges in the future.
Visiclaims is a division of Rockfarm Supply Chain Solutions — a recognized MercuryGate freight claims management company serving clients across North America. We understand the need for advanced, intuitive services that are customized to reflect the needs of your business.
If you’re interested in learning more about how our Visiclaims freight logistics company can help you resolve freight claims, cut costs and make more informed business decisions, call us at 815-573-0155 or get in touch today. One of our representatives would be happy to put together a package of services that works for you.
