Thread regarding State Farm Insurance layoffs

We're still scheduled to be on the phone all day every day! With tasks piling up to ridiculous levels. Just phone. Angry and irrational callers all day long. Loud mouthed, hard of hearing elderly, thick accents, pushy agency staff, and often all lying and otherwise not making any damn sense at all. Just phone. All day. Every day. 🤨

When everyone's tracked with 'metrics', they're about to douse their service with foreign hires, either by onshoring here and/or by offshoring. A sign of desperate measures.

OP is a load of crap. It is all about empathy and helping the customer. Yes we push self service but if they can't or don't want to use it then we are the too help. What a joke of a post.

I’m sorry this is your view because it’s complete crap. If Associates and specialist would stop avoiding calls, quit calling out, have some freaking business ethics, we would not be in the crap we are in. It has always been about the customer.

You would think they learned their lesson about overtime with that lawsuit in California that focused on CAT duty against Farners. Farmers lost, SF received a suit in kind and settled for a rather large amount.

Plus when Mr./Mrs. Insured are older than State Farm itself, why should they have to be subjected to a description of Pocket Estimate (an app for a smartphone that these people don't even have) or how to set up an account on the website to add their bank account so we can deposit a payment instead of mailing it? Or any of this other crap.

The top is far far far too removed from the day to day operations. Everyone but the people actually helping the customers is staring at spreadsheets full of numbers (that are flawed a lot of the time too), and putting enormous pressure on the front line.

Someday robots will write the estimates from these smartphone photos. But oh my god, it is a rough time right now. Will these robots know to clean this mess up too?

Those total loss settlement papers are routinely sent to an agent’s office for face to face closing. I get them for my insureds as well as claimants. We also get them for customers whose agents are far away.

Claims isn’t what it used to be (and I know because I was a claim rep for years). But we’re still good enough that I often quote and write policies for claimants who come in to settle their total loss, and who are quite happy with State Farm.

At least if they did that there would be straight up proof that none of this was ever about the customer at all. Certainly not about the employees either. Moreover, since we aren’t beholden to shareholders, who and what is it all about exactly? 🤔

They are betting the farm on virtual, but employees, customers, and body shops are not swallowing this pill. Body shops are passive aggressively doing nothing with EA assignments. Do you know who has to hear all about it? The poor employees schlepping claims in their call centers.

Well the guy at the top is more focused on the next place to park it. The guy under him is probably the most disliked executive ever employed at State Farm, and only focused on assuring his place on the good old boy board of directors. They’ll share responsibility for destroying the company, but will walk away with a fortune.

Karma is out there though. Most of us are just hanging on waiting for next shoe to drop.

“Problem solved”

Another Armchair General below. A lot of insureds are disappointed enough as it is that SF does not have staff to provide claims service in the states they live in anymore. Do you think Mr. and Mrs. Insured in Kansas wants to settle their total loss claim with someone in a call center in India?

It’s clear there is a lot of incompetence at the top, but outsourcing to foreign call centers would be suicidal.

Outsource the calls overseas with only the most complex returning to a specialized unit. Problem solved and more money saved to help reduce premium.

That's what they want you think, that they put us all on the phone so the customer doesn't have to wait too long...another bullcrap excuse. So in the afternoon when we are waiting for a call to come customers are holding how long..not at all. Most afternoons and some mornings the calls have slowed down and we have sometimes 3-4 minutes between calls, so you mean to tell me that we ALL need to be there for the customers, what customers are we there for exactly? Oh yeah we are

"supposed" to do discretionary work...gimme me a break. Nope this is calculated plan, to take us all of the phones so the tasks build up. Since when in the past few years has SF really cared about the customer?

You mean to tell me that some of us can't be working tasks instead of waiting for calls to come in? We can and we should be, nope this is just another calculated play.

They put everyone on phone so the customers do not have to wait on hold too long. Even with all those people scheduled on the phone all day, there is still hold time. Staffing is inadequate for one reason or another. Either there are not enough people or they replaced too many experienced staff with inexperienced and/or incompetent staff. It's probably the latter since I'm sure "they" have looked at the numbers, and according to their numbers there is no need to hire more people.

Remember this SF commercial?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rliyrrU7SW4

We are now "Blah Blah Insurance" just like the rest. It's a bit ironic.

They need to own their terrible mistakes. They ran (and still are running) experienced talent out the door. There is a reason for paying higher wages! You retain better talent and you aren't in this constant state of hire & fire/quit with your employees. They're getting what they deserve with their cheap labor. I only feel bad for the good employees whose lives have been majorly impacted.

A "plan" to work their non-optional OT, where they wanted feed back from us peons for the plan...lol..the non-optional OT was their creation, they made the non-optional overtime happen, this is their fault. Also they have to call it "non-optional" because in some states you CAN'T make people work OT, you can't. also they were involved in a lawsuit concerning mandatory overtime. SF used to call it mandatory overtime remember, now they call it non-optional. think about it.....

https://blogs.lawyers.com/attorney/wrongful-termination/state-farm-faces-wrongful-termination-claim-26493/

How many of us said that all we ever get are phones day after day week after week...too many and yet the masters couldn't figure out why the tasks were out of control.. REALLY? They put us in phones week day after day and week after week for a very specific reason, you all realize that right, the masters are the ones that created the need for non-optional OT...they are the ones that made this problem..thing is I can't figure out why they did this, but they have their reasons. Was it to try and drive more people out the door, was it to drive more customers away? Well they have succeed on both counts. Maybe this is exactly what they want. Burn the employees, give them a good reason to fire us and then in return we just shed more and more policy holders.

There should be no need for mandatory OT, no reason EVER, optional OT yeah sure.

We need to look deeper as to why ....and they aren't scared of us, they probably want us to walk out, I think they are looking to sell the entire company, they are doing this to drive the price down.

When they create their own problems and then act like they care what we think, when have they ever cared about what we think???? NEVER, just remember that going forward..there is way more to this than meets the eye. Look Deeper, something is up.

@U2NJSyG-1dkz get to 5 years to vest in the pension and then get out. 5 years is easy enough to walk away and find something better. You will feel a lot different when you hit 15, 20, 25 years so do it while you can.

I wish this were fake. The ethical aspect of claim handling is gone. The VPO has no idea what that is doing to the business. Both customer and employee tell people to stay away from SF, that’s why there is such a hard time finding knowledgeable employees and retaining customers. They’ve turned this titanic full speed at the iceberg, we’ve just got to know when to get to the life raft.

For me the only reason I stay is because I’m almost at 5 years so my PTO accrual increases and I’m RA2. I really don’t care what metric they’re after as what are they going to do fire me? Ha. Please do. Let some other newb try and handle this crap that I do while I collect unemployment and find a much better job.

If you really want to shock them, organize a mass walkout across multiple claim levels. I know we could get PropT1, Express, Auto ILR, and Total Loss out. State Farm could fire in the masses but they are so hurt right now that wouldn’t be possible. That rumor about MT got spread far and wide by this website, so... let’s get it done.

NOT FAKE, what the OP is far more true than it is not true. The vibe is such that they make it seem as though they wouldn't even care if an employee fell over at their desk from "broken heart syndrome" and were dying. Instead they would harass the employee to make make sure they aren't planning to leave early (you'll get points...), be out the next day, and that they have some kind of plan to work their non-optional OT. It's dreadful and should not be this way.

OP is spot on!

No the OP is spot on, that is exactly how it is in claims. Also if you are under the time limit you are looked at to because you maybe didn't do enough in the claim, see you just can't win. No we really aren't allowed to help the customer like we should be able to.

OP ..... FAKE FAKE FAKE too silly

This is a sad testament about what was once good company.