Birchmoor Grand Rapids, Michigan
Birchmoor reads every finish claim before a person does
A dining brand where every claim is a tabletop and every tabletop costs $600. How Birchmoor’s care team uses photo reading to sort claims, and why it never lets software say yes.
41 sec
to write up a claim summary with photos and coverage
$18,400
in transit claims filed with carriers inside the window last quarter
84%
of suggested resolutions matched the care team’s decision
Birchmoor builds solid walnut and white oak dining tables in Grand Rapids and delivers them with two white-glove carriers. Its customers write less often than a sofa brand’s, but when they write, it is usually about the top of a table, and a new tabletop costs about $600 to make and ship.
The cost of the wrong category
Bettina Ramsey’s five-person care team handles around 640 conversations a month. The ones that matter most are finish claims: a white ring, a hazy patch, a soft spot in the lacquer. Under Birchmoor’s warranty those are covered for five years. A crack along the grain is a structural claim with a different process. A dent with a crushed corner protector is a transit claim, and it has to be filed with the carrier within seven days or the money is gone.
“We were losing transit claims because they looked like finish claims,” Bettina says. “By the time someone realized, the carrier window had closed.”
Sorting, not deciding
Birchmoor turned on photo reading in August. When a customer writes about damage, Porchlight asks for three photos if it has fewer, sorts the claim into one of Birchmoor’s four categories, and pulls the clause that applies. Then it hands the claim to a person with a summary: order, delivery date, active coverage, category and a suggested fix drawn from the team’s own past decisions.
It never approves anything. Birchmoor’s handoff rules say every claim goes to a person, and that every transit claim is flagged with the days left to file.
What changed
A claim summary now takes 41 seconds to appear after the third photo arrives. The care team’s suggested resolution matches Porchlight’s 84% of the time, and Bettina reviews the other 16% each Friday to see whether a rule is missing. Last quarter the team filed $18,400 in transit claims with carriers, all inside the window.
The best thing it does is tell us how many days we have left. Nobody used to know.
Birchmoor is on the Parlor plan with its storefront, its order system, both carriers and its warranty registry connected.
Leave the light on tonight
Connect your storefront and one carrier this afternoon. Porchlight drafts tonight’s answers for you to approve in the morning.