Ethos Water Damage Restoration · Portland, OR
Active client · Multiple owner-time workflows automated across the production floor
TPA programs feel like a lifeline when you're small. They feel like a margin cap once you've grown. We rebuild your scope-defense and supplement workflow so you stop fighting for money you should already be getting paid.
- 48 hrs
- supplement doc turnaround
- 3
- major TPAs we work daily
- 200
- trained projects across TPAs
- 20,537
- field photos in corpus
The bottleneck
What was actually leaking
Itel cuts your scope. The desk adjuster cuts it again.
By the time the file is approved, the carrier has compressed pricing twice and you’re settling at a number that doesn’t pay for the truck roll. The losses are quiet but they’re constant.
Your supplement hit rate is below 60% and you don’t know why
It feels like the carriers are being difficult. Pull the files and the truth is uglier, the docs are bad. Photos missing the substrate. Narratives without an IICRC reference. Desks reject what they can’t approve in two minutes.
Your TPA scorecard is one notch from program review
Cycle time slipped because techs are great on Day 1 mit but documentation lags four to six days. Customer sat dropped one quarter and never recovered. One more cycle and you’re off the program, and that’s 60% of your volume.
Nobody on your team owns the carrier relationship
PMs are juggling scopes. Estimators are firefighting supplements. The desk adjuster’s last email is sitting in three different inboxes and nobody’s drafted a response. Every hour of latency is a settlement point.
Find · what we diagnosed
- Supplement hit rate sub-60%, drifting down each quarter
- Docs to desk in 4–6 days post-discovery
- Scorecards in yellow on cycle time and customer sat
- PMs writing supplement narratives from scratch each time
- AR on TPA work aged out past 75 days
- No standardized response cadence to desk adjuster emails
Fit · what we installed
- TPA scorecard read across every active program, strengths, weaknesses, escalation paths
- Scope defense system, itel-vs-Xactimate diff on every contested file
- Supplement playbook with carrier-specific language and escalation cadence
- Carrier comms agent that drafts every response with the IICRC reference and photo evidence
- Monthly scorecard review against cycle time, customer sat, and supplement hit rate
Mature Pacific Northwest water-damage shop running heavy residential plus small commercial volume. The owner was the bottleneck on three workflows at once, writing T&M estimates after hours, drafting supplement narratives by hand, and chasing aged AR across a dozen carriers. We installed three agents on top of the existing stack, no rip-and-replace. The T&M estimating co-pilot drafts scopes directly from CompanyCam photos and moisture readings, trained on the shop's last twelve months of files so the line items and pricing match how the shop already wins them. The carrier comms agent drafts every supplement narrative with the IICRC S500 references and the four photos desk adjusters actually look for, so the file is approvable in two minutes instead of two weeks. The AR follow-up agent runs an aging cadence by carrier, drafts the chase email at 30/45/60 days, and escalates anything past 60. The owner's nights and weekends came back, supplement docs ship to desk in under 48 hours, and AR aging compressed without a new hire on payroll.
The results
Before → after, and what holds it
Consulting found the leak and made the call. Automation keeps it from sliding back without the owner in the loop.
Supplement hit rate sub-60%, drifting down each quarter
Supplement hit rate trending toward 80%+ with documentation behind every claim
Automation holds itDocs to desk in 4–6 days post-discovery
Docs to desk in <48 hours, photo protocol enforced at the truck
Consulting moved itScorecards in yellow on cycle time and customer sat
Scorecards green on the categories the program weights heaviest
Consulting moved itPMs writing supplement narratives from scratch each time
Carrier comms agent drafts every supplement narrative with IICRC refs
Automation holds itAR on TPA work aged out past 75 days
TPA AR sub-50 days; supplements paid before the next file opens
Automation holds itNo standardized response cadence to desk adjuster emails
Two-hour response SLA on every desk adjuster email, drafted, human-reviewed, sent
Automation holds itCohort numbers are averages across shops we’ve worked with. Single-shop numbers are one engagement and labeled that way in the stats above. Anonymized at the operator’s request — the numbers are not.
“Our supplement approval rate was killing us and I genuinely thought it was the carriers being difficult. Turns out our docs were just bad. R360 showed me the four photos every desk adjuster wants to see on a Cat 2 and we stopped fighting for things we should’ve been getting paid for.”
Want this run on your numbers?
The work starts with a 30-minute Operating Diagnostic. We tell you where your shop leaks before anyone signs.