Supporting customers to reclaim the power of their insurance policy

Supporting customers to reclaim the power of their insurance policy

Supporting customers to reclaim the power of their insurance policy.

Gained Award
At a glance

The Challenge

How might a multinational insurance firm play a more real and truly supportive role in their customer's journey, instead of leaving it all in the inconsistent hands of agents?
  • 42
    participants
  • 4
    cities in Vietnam
  • 1
    holistic service delivery framework

The Outcome

An innovative portfolio of service experience solutions that included new roles, spaces and tools.

After rigorous prioritisation, we delivered a digital self-service tool prototype, aimed at meeting the organisation's twin goals of reducing inconsistent service quality and taking back ownership of their relationships with insurance clients.

Impact

With our clients embedded in the field with us, we fundamentally changed the way they thought about and conducted research in service of creating more value for the South East Asian region in their product strategy. The research work gave the team new frameworks that codified their customers' needs in ways they had not considered, that built up to actionable opportunity areas for them to transform their client relationships in Vietnam. Our prototyping phase built confidence in taking those first steps to digitally transform a business with traditional processes - chiefly making insurance claims - ; we designed not just to a better experience, but increased loyalty to our client's business to attain their goal of taking more direct ownership of their relationship with their customers.

Insurance is a clever concept. And simple enough for first principle logic. But, somewhere along the way, the delivery of this service to the actual people it is meant to benefit has become tangled in bureaucracy, which often leads to miscommunications and disempowerment. In Vietnam, knowledge of insurance is nascent, despite it being a rapidly evolving market for financial services. 

Our client, a leading multinational insurance firm, was facing a challenge: to match the level of their customer service delivery with their aggressive growth. It was a complex balancing act that called for a deep understanding of human behaviour through a cultural and social lens.

“My sister’s agent left, but [the insurance firm] didn’t tell her. When she was in an accident and wanted to claim, she couldn’t contact her agent. She called the hotline and only then, she got a new agent to help her. We should be informed earlier.”
Customer

Unearthing the real cause of problems, beyond the symptoms 

AGENCY spent three weeks in four cities in Vietnam to find out what a great service experience looked and felt like for customers. By simply walking hand-in-hand with them – not only through financial service experiences, but also in their daily lives – we were able to glean context about what shapes their behaviour. How do they live? What do they aspire to? How do they communicate? What do they value?

Only then were we able to understand how insurance could be contextualised to fit their lives and their needs.

“No one has been able to tell me why [insurance] is important. No information speaks to me, and the agents keep calling me three-four times a day! There are no facts. Only sales.”
Customer

Translating a service to be equally meaningful across cultures

Designing for humans calls for a deep understanding of context. We also learned from our research – in customers' homes and in cafes over coffee – how values like respect, care, trust, reassurance, and autonomy were expressed in Vietnam. 

For example, a sketch concept (used to provoke responses) inspired by the Apple Genius Bar, in which customers initiate a consultation by walking up to the Bar, unanimously tested poorly. The act of serving – greeting customers when they walk in and initiating first contact – was seen as more respectful. Standing behind a counter was seen as a poor mark of service, regardless of the knowledge that person might possess and be willing to share. 

Despite this apprehension towards the self-service model, customers were, at the same time, excited by the ability that online tools could give them to learn and do in their own time and space. The big opportunity was for our client to design the customer experience across physical, human and digital touch points, thereby ensuring consistency of care.

Wizard of Oz prototyping, live on chatbots.

Designing the full service experience by reframing roles, spaces, tools, and processes 

Together, AGENCY and the client team co-created a portfolio of service experience solutions that included new roles and spaces. The previous customer journey was defined by functional points. After hearing customer stories, we reframed the journey to reflect the experiences customers want to have. We also built a corresponding service principle that would inform the ethos of the service provider at each stage of the customer journey. 

We designed for various touch points, aiming to support consistency of care throughout the whole experience. After rigorous prioritisation, we delivered a prototype of a digital self-service tool to reduce the inconsistent service quality provided by agents. 

Using role-play, Zalo (the Vietnamese equivalent of WeChat) and Microsoft Excel to give real-time responses, we set up the prototype in Vietnamese, taking 13 customers, and 6 agents and customer care officers through the new self-service experience of making a claim.

Roleplaying scenarios to test early prototypes.

Moving Forward

From this prototype, we were able to recommend to our client:

  • How and when to use this tool. When the right moment is in the customer journey to introduce a digital self service tool.
  • Barriers to adoption. The prototype enabled a deeper exploration into mental models around self-service, providing a framework for further solutions-driven thinking.

How We Did It

Our process

Discover

Methods & tools used
  • Internal stakeholder & in-depth user interviews
  • Alignment exercises
  • UX audit of digital
  • Data / metric review
  • Recorded heuristic user testing of (old) website
  • Sacrificial concept sharing

Define

Insights

We uncovered that a younger Malay audience could be part of the target market; and that despite their bilingualism and the diverse choice of other media formats available to them, this audience desired a stronger, distinct Malay perspective and voice in their local Singapore news and the news in general.

Develop

Solutions & Approaches
  • Reimagining content formats
  • Creating new digital tools and experiences
  • Going back to the roots and reconnecting with familiar names in journalism

What we delivered

Deliver

Outcomes

Research

  • Internal stakeholder & in-depth user interviews
  • Alignment exercises
  • UX audit of digital
  • Data / metric review
  • Recorded heuristic user testing of (old) website
  • Sacrificial concept sharing

Design

Outcomes

Design

  • Complete redesign of the web experience for Berita Harian for use on phones, tablets, and computers.
  • An on-the-fly, in-platform translation feature from Malay to English.
  • More habit-forming features to keep focus on the product (from free access to all Covid-19 related articles to highlighting key themes for users appearing in top-navigation).
  • Adding a podcast widget on the home page.
  • Fully tested design solutions for future iterations and directions of the platform.
  • A system built on Atomic Design principles.
  • A working, tested, web redesign in 4 weeks; down from a previous 6-8 month redesign plan.

Business

Outcomes

Business

  • A working, tested, web redesign in 4 weeks;
  • down from a previous 6-8 month redesign plan.

Discover

Define

Develop

Methods & tools used
Insights
Solutions & Approaches
  • Internal stakeholder & in-depth user interviews
  • Alignment exercises
  • UX audit of digital
  • Data / metric review
  • Recorded heuristic user testing of (old) website
  • Sacrificial concept sharing

We uncovered that a younger Malay audience could be part of the target market; and that despite their bilingualism and the diverse choice of other media formats available to them, this audience desired a stronger, distinct Malay perspective and voice in their local Singapore news and the news in general.

  • Reimagining content formats
  • Creating new digital tools and experiences
  • Going back to the roots and reconnecting with familiar names in journalism

Deliver

Design

Business

Outcomes
Outcomes
Outcomes

Research

Design

Business

  • Internal stakeholder & in-depth user interviews
  • Alignment exercises
  • UX audit of digital
  • Data / metric review
  • Recorded heuristic user testing of (old) website
  • Sacrificial concept sharing
  • Complete redesign of the web experience for Berita Harian for use on phones, tablets, and computers.
  • An on-the-fly, in-platform translation feature from Malay to English.
  • More habit-forming features to keep focus on the product (from free access to all Covid-19 related articles to highlighting key themes for users appearing in top-navigation).
  • Adding a podcast widget on the home page.
  • Fully tested design solutions for future iterations and directions of the platform.
  • A system built on Atomic Design principles.
  • A working, tested, web redesign in 4 weeks; down from a previous 6-8 month redesign plan.
  • A working, tested, web redesign in 4 weeks;
  • down from a previous 6-8 month redesign plan.

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