A New Agent Experience
Imagining a new Insurance Agent experience with Guidewire and Salesforce.
OVERVIEW
This is a partnership between Guidewire and Salesforce to redesign the agent experience. Guidewire specializes in tools for the P&C (property and casualty) insurance industry. Salesforce leads in customer relationship management (CRM) solutions.
Guidewire for Salesforce aims to give agents a 360-degree view of their customers. This will help agents make informed decisions on how to help the people they serve.
ROLES & DURATION
Lead User Experience Designer | Guidewire
User Research, Information Architecture, Storyboarding, Interaction Design, Prototyping, & Usability Testing
Team: 1 designer, 1 product manager, 1 subject matter expert
June 2019 - Nov 2019
CLIENT
The problem
Currently, insurance agents need to comb through many sources to complete their work.
Quoting and selling insurance requires them to reenter data many times. Critical insights are buried across many platforms. Agents need to remember disparate systems processes to complete tasks.
Each additional step is disruptive to their workflow. Disconnected information across systems make timely decisions and service difficult.
THE CHALLENGE
Help insurance agents make decisions more quickly
Our goal was to streamline experiences for captive insurance agents. This meant removing barriers to information. Agents needed the right data at the right time to make decisions.
To enable decision-making, our goals included:
Consolidating important customer and policy data.
Highlighting priorities for personal/business targets.
Surfacing meaningful life and policy events.
We used Salesforce design patterns and leveraged Guidewire's InsuranceSuite data.
THE DISCOVERY
What do we know about captive agents?
A captive insurance agent is an insurance agent who only works for one insurance company. They only sell insurance policies from that company. Agents seek out new business and maintain relationships with existing customers.
Agent's existing pain points
We validated existing research with agents and subject matter experts. Their frustrations included:
Having to use many systems, often redundant, to do work.
Difficulty locating information.
Resources are too focused on business data with minimal customer details.
Not having a holistic view of the tasks needed to meet their goals.
How do I make the most of my day?
Insurance agents (and some of us) plan their day and week based on their goals and information they know. They plan their days and weeks by urgency, date, and cost (commission or risk).
We identified the answers to the questions agents asked themselves while planning work.
Where do I put my attention first?
Urgent information
What do I need to know to make accurate decisions?
Key insights
How am I performing?
Status of the business target
How do I become more efficient?
Single source of truth.
What do I need to provide great customer service? Customer information
Disclaimer: These questions/answers reflect their current pain points.
ADDITIONAL MOTIVATION
Excelling at customer service
Agents were also motivated by the customer service aspects of their work.
They want the ability to provide excellent customer service (and are rewarded for it).
Are evaluated on outcomes, so the accuracy & pace by which they can do their jobs matter.
Are motivated to get customers what they need at the right price, so information is critical.
CONCEPTUALIZATION
A day in the life of a captive agent
We leveraged our learnings to create scenarios and storyboard "A Day in the Life" of a captive agent. The scenarios helped us visualize the agent workflow and flush out what they do and should see. We used this exercise to define the most essential aspects of the agent workflow.
Centralizing business data
We wanted to help agents bring focus into their workday. Agents could plan around a simplified view of time-sensitive, financial, and customer data. They could use this as a resource to begin their day and guide progress.
We framed this view around these questions:
What do I pay attention to first?
What is critical?
What is the information I need to make accurate & quick decisions?
Analyzing a submission
We wanted to help agents bring focus into their workday. Agents could plan around a simplified view of time-sensitive, financial, and customer data. They could use this as a resource to begin their day and guide progress.
We framed this view around these questions:
What do I pay attention to first?
What is critical?
What is the information I need to make accurate & quick decisions?
Understanding an account
We wanted to help agents bring focus into their workday. Agents could plan around a simplified view of time-sensitive, financial, and customer data. They could use this as a resource to begin their day and guide progress.
We framed this view around these questions:
What do I pay attention to first?
What is critical?
What is the information I need to make accurate & quick decisions?
INITIAL WORKFLOW DESIGN
Simplifying the workflow
Regardless of the steps for a product, all efforts could be grouped into simplified stages. We validated the high-level stages with each department. Grouping in this manner allowed people to understand the product's progress at a glance.
This is the workflow after an investigation concludes.
TESTING
Rapid Iterative Testing
The initial designs were tested along the jobs agents told us they need to get done.
13 Participants
2 GWRE internal POCs (not included in the data)
5 internal agents
5 outside agents
We used the Iteration method.
Debriefed after each session & iterated designs before the next test.
We used an exit survey after each test to gauge NPS for concepts shown.
Feedback
Provide a 'one stop' summary view of essential customer information and insights so agents can prioritize their day and increase job success.
Keep important information one click, or hover away to help agents work efficiently.
Show corresponding averages of information to help agents prepare for conversations with customers.
Words matter to inform meaning and make the application learnable.
Allow for some customization to accommodate for the different persona focus to show how well an agent, or their business, is doing.
DEEPER INSIGHTS
Broadening the spectrum
When we began, we were focused on captive agents that... thought this only included those who worked as... that Captive agents primarily focus on jobs related to:
Sales (acquiring new customers)
Service: (servicing existing customers/policies)
Customer-facing (interacting with existing & potential customers)
Throughout our research, the spectrum expanded to...
Inside Sales & Outside Agents
New Submissions (generating sales, hitting quotas)
Leads (production, working with inbound calls)
Business (looking for clientele)
Service Existing Customers (renewals, policy changes)
Outside Agents (Agency Owners)
Operations (tasks, education, backlog)
FINAL CONCEPTS
Surfacing critical information and concealing complexity
Early on, we learned that removing steps would need Board approval. This could not happen within our timeframe. So, we opted to provide simplified but meaningful information at a glance. We wanted to bring transparency, guidance, and flexibility forward.
Centralized Data
Provide a 'one stop' summary view of time sensitive information and insights so agents can prioritize their day and increase job success
Have urgent & important to-dos called out to help start the day.
The 'right' words make all the difference.
Allow for customization, particularly of the landing page, to accommodate for the different job focus, often to show how well an agent, or their business, is doing.
Graphs showing the future by weeks is more manageable and helpful than months.
New Submission
Show corresponding averages of information to help with preparation for conversations with customers— especially for new submissions.
Recommendations and access to relevant links saves time on research (especially for newer agents).
Easy access to contact information makes for fewer clicks.
Account Summary
The 'Read Me' call out provided agents with quick access to what's happening with the customer.
Keep important information one click, or hover away to help agents work efficiently.
Account events are useful
and learnable.
Next steps
Spend more time refining and defining the participant profile.
Add an NPS score to "Is this enough information to make decisions?"
End to end testing alongside the product (ProducerEngage) and workflow.
Flesh out product ready interactions for the new experience concepts.
Flesh out more details and additional workflows for SF/GWRE integration and doing more user testing.
Apply the Jutro look and feel and assess any gaps.