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By: The Encircle Team
Building credibility in a new industry using manual tools and processes.
Using Encircle’s simple contents workflow for documentation and reporting.
Improved relationships with adjusters, time savings, and business growth.
By using Encircle, My Contents quickly established credibility with adjusters and restorers alike, resulting in impressive business growth.
Business partners Ahsan Khan and Daniel Rodriguez were operating a moving company when they were asked to pack out contents on a few insurance jobs. They discovered an extremely underserved market where their skills organizing, handling, and packing people’s possessions would allow them to fill a void and gain significant market share. So in 2021, they became a full service contents restoration business, called My Contents.
Working with insurance carriers, adjusters, and restoration contractors brought new challenges, but Ahsan and Daniel took pride in making sure that the homeowner was always the priority.
For other restoration companies, contents restoration may be their 4th or 5th line of business. But for My Contents, it is their ONLY line of business, allowing them to differentiate themselves as subject matter experts in the market. They use their own in-house storage and hired staff (instead of temporary labor), to maintain a high level of service and quality of work.
THE CHALLENGE:
To ensure success, My Contents needed to focus on establishing a good reputation and relationships within the property restoration industry. The best way to do this was providing adjusters with the documentation they needed to make decisions.
They started by using paper records to capture item details and uploading photos of the items from their phones to a shared Google Drive, but this was extremely tedious and time-consuming.
Creating a report took hours to organize into something an adjuster could interpret. Sharing images was challenging, as they would run into firewalls because larger insurers wouldn’t allow their staff to access shared folders (for security reasons).
“We started getting busier and managing it on paper wasn’t good enough anymore. We were using Google Drive to upload pictures.There was no categorization and there was no disposition, there was nothing. It increased work on site and at the backend, so we started looking for a solution," Daniel explained.
THE SOLUTION:
Ahsan started his search on Restoration Rebels, a private restoration Facebook networking group, to see what other contents companies were using for documentation and reporting. He found Encircle kept coming up over and over again in his search.
"We did a demo with Encircle, and within a matter of minutes, Daniel and I looked at each other like, ‘okay, this is it’...and we haven't looked back since."
- Ahsan Khan, Co-Owner, My Contents
His team has found the mobile app very easy to learn, using the dedicated contents workflow for more efficient packouts. Ahsan commented, “It's one app…It's very easy and user-friendly compared to what we were doing before…. Encircle is one tool that we will not go away from. It's changed our business drastically."
With Encircle, the My Contents team can quickly capture item photos and add details like description, disposition, age, brand and more. Perhaps the most exciting part for Ahsan was the reporting capabilities within Encircle: "Before we were just taking pictures, we didn't have the ability to generate reports, PDFs, Excel documents… Now we can do all that with the click of a button."
When the My Contents team sends estimates to adjusters, they can quickly generate and include their initial inspection report, showing detailed photos from their walkthrough, to get ahead of any questions that may be asked.
“We bombard them with detail. I've had adjusters ask me, ‘How are you doing this? How are you giving me this much detailed information?’”
- Ahsan Khan, Co-Owner, My Contents
If they are ever challenged on the length of time spent on site, they are able to reference the time and date stamps on the photos to prove they were there.
THE RESULTS:
Since implementing Encircle as their solution for contents inventories and packouts, my contents has seen several benefits for their business:
Improved relationships and credibility with adjusters
Thanks to Encircle’s easy-to-use contents workflow and reporting capabilities, Ahsan and his team are able to send adjusters detailed reports and answer any questions promptly, with very little need for back-and-forth discussion. “They often don't come back with a lot of questions. It's saved us a lot of time, in back-and-forth, and getting stuff approved quickly,” Ahsan reflected.
Daniel added, “The comprehensive documentation provided by Encircle, including detailed pictures, text notes, and time stamps, enables us to record pre-existing wear and tear or damage on contents during the pack-out process, effectively mitigating potential disputes for both adjusters and My Contents throughout the project.”
Significant time savings
By switching from manual, pen-and-paper processes, My Contents has improved their efficiency and seen significant time savings.
"Encircle has saved me countless hours, because I'm not shuffling through papers trying to find a specific item. Everything is available at my fingertips….It takes me two minutes to generate a report, or look up a specific item, or answer a question."
- Ahsan Khan, Co-Owner, My Contents
Business growth
My Contents has grown to over $2 million in revenue in less than 2 years. “Encircle has been a game-changer for us to scale. We’ve been able to increase the quality of work that we provide for our clients, the adjusters, and all materially interested parties," commented Ahsan.
CONCLUSION:
Encircle proved to be a transformative solution for My Contents, allowing them to enter into a new industry and thrive within a short period of time.
“I highly recommend Encircle to any business looking to add contents restoration services into their offering. It’s had such a positive impact on our business, increasing our efficiencies and growth opportunities.”
- Ahsan Khan, Co-Owner, My Contents
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