Service Design Sprint: Insurance

In 2019, the insurance provider sold its underwriting business to a 3rd party. As a result, they needed to overcome organizational silos and formulate a holistic platform/system mentality to align the two companies.

My team and I worked with key stakeholders in a quick-fire, 2-week design sprint to align understanding and critical goals for improving their customer experience. The focus was on their two best-selling insurance types; Car & Home.

The business recognized that its prospective customers and co-operative members were increasingly dissatisfied with the insurance experience following the recent sale of the underwriting process to a 3rd party.

The two organizations acknowledged the need to come together with a unified approach to providing complete service, from awareness to advocacy.

We formed a collaborative working group with key stakeholders, which enabled the two organizations to identify pain points and opportunities across their disparate customer journeys and internal processes. Our 2-week design sprint broke down communication barriers and focused the group on the customer.

They were interested in applying Service Design Thinking and practices to understand the full Customer Experience and the internal processes that made that happen.

This initial discovery would help the internal Design Team, and later their Insurance Service Design Group, understand which teams are involved at different points during the customer journey and who they might be able to speak to find out more about customers’ pain points or what is providing great service.

The Co-op is proficient at tracking customer and user satisfaction measurements and they were keen to identify further opportunities to do so. Especially relating to areas of customer dissatisfaction.

Due to the time constraints and budget, I prioritized ‘awareness to purchase and gave the new working group training on how they could continue to populate the information into documents and a Service Blueprint.

The Co-op has several touchpoints for its many products and services, these are often combined to make up the end-to-end customer journey. I needed to focus on the most relevant to the insurance purchase experience.

I conducted an audit for the search to purchase journeys for car and home insurance across the different touchpoints. I mapped the service onto a blueprint reflecting the current state of frontstage and backstage processes showing how internal operations impact the customer experience.

We used real insight and data collected by both companies recording it on Google Sheets for easy access by various stakeholders both during and following the Sprint. I wanted this to be the foundation of a document that could grow and change as new information was uncovered and issues were resolved.

We used real insight and data collected by both companies and conducted a Service Safari of the search to purchase journey. I mapped the service onto a blueprint reflecting the current state of frontstage and backstage processes showing how internal operations impact the customer experience.

Mapping the Service Blueprint

I mapped the end-to-end customer experience across all channels, from awareness to renewal or cancellation. The front stage channels included; the contact center, 3rd party aggregator tools, digital, and direct mail.

I added the internal processes and highlighted any gaps or disconnects between the two organizations by facilitating workshops with subject matter experts.

I refined the main journey and findings into a simplified version that the team could use to gain stakeholder buy-in for the work to come.

Here you can see more clearly the journey and some of the more damaging customer experience points, such as setting up the online account.

Governance

Part of our sprint aim was to provide a framework for the working group to build upon as they continue to work together and gain new insight about customers.

We created a governance framework that supported the team in adding to and reviewing the blueprint, allowing the document to reflect current state processes and understanding as this adapts.

The service blueprint uncovered the primary pain points for both customers and the internal operations. We prioritized critical areas to target for the most beneficial impact and recommended systems, such as measurement frameworks, that could be reused or enhanced to streamline operational activities.

From here, we identified a roadmap of prioritized initiatives and made recommendations for recording and acting upon new insights.

The new team was spun up with a kick start on where to begin their investigation into main customer pain points and which departments were involved. This was just under 12 months ago and the company has since updated its site to address some of the key pain points uncovered during the sprint and is now receiving largely positive reviews on Trustpilot.