Getting Started – Agree on methods before talking about the product

Before even entertaining the idea of new products, every stake holder in the team came together to align on some principles. The principle was that this project was going to take the approach of a Start-up in order to avoid the over funding of an idea that didn’t have the right market fit. Through rigorous testing and validation of assumptions, we were going to remain nimble and competitive in the insurance industry.

The Testing roadmap, recently re-popularized by PCF, was quintessential in ensuring UX/CX to be a part of the product development process. To help us stick to this start up mentality we used the Testing Roadmap which was recently re-popularized by PCF. This was quintessential in ensuring UX/CX to be a part of the product development process.

Lean Canvas - Making a business model

Having you ever used a Lean Canvas? They’re great!

Unlike a business plan that could take a couple weeks to make, a business model can be generated in roughly 2hrs by going through 9, 20minute exercises. These exercises force the participants to focus on solutions and success metrics, which at the end leave all stakeholders with action items.

The Lean Canvas is best utilized after a product idea had been reduced to its smallest possible concept, as well as having a certain level of insight regarding the type of red tape that lies ahead. During our product development we had made the following discoveries which lead to our 1st pivot:

A – There was pressure from adjacent organizations to deliver a “Full Insurance Product”
B – Our biggest hurdles came from with-in the company, not the market.
C – Bad timing. Certain legislation would impact our unique value proposition, nullifying our advantage.

The fact that the pivot happened without resistance was proof and assurance that the process and methodology was working.

Abstracting UX/CX

Have you ever been put on the spot to explain “What is a UX strategy”? I don’t know about most people, but I definitely froze for a moment and my mind went blank.

Not being the person to waste an opportunity, I started drawing several diagrams to explain the relation of UX & CX in the context of a shopping lifecycle.

A shopping journey has a funnel going in, and a funnel going out, split by a point of purchase. The funnel width corresponds with the freedom a user is given in an environment.

The success of an experience is measured in conversions and drop-offs. Good UX is about using frictions points as an opportunity for conversion.

There is a correlation between the amount of information a user has to provide, and how quickly a conversion happens. Longer journeys are at higher risk of drop-offs.

After the 1st conversion, a customer should be rewarded in an easier experience when returned. This is the retention strategy for most e-commerce.

Defining The Initial Strategy - Present the $ ASAP

Problem
The inception exercise, persona journey mapping, and customer interviews all point to the same customer pain-points:

1. Shopping for insurance takes too long

2. Insurance language is cryptic

Our research showed that the most insurance quotes our subjects have solicited was no more than 2. The number of quotes a customer sought immediately after an accident was roughly 3 or 4.

“Insurance is a grudge purchase. No one puts themselves through that kind of pain unless they’re really really pissed.”

There was a clear indicator that insurance quote abandonment was related to the length of its process. We had decided that this was a small and measurable problem to start with.

Approach
In order to get our shopping process some traction, we had started with a competitive analysis against brands chosen for the following traits.

• Traditional, top of mind

• Most profitable, largest ad spend

• Marketed for ‘ease of use’

• Emerging in FinTec/InsurTec

After organizing the personal questions asked into a content matrix, it was easy to categorize the questions asking into two general buckets. The 1st being “Facts about you” which was full of personal information that couldn’t be altered or had no impact to the insurance quote. The 2nd bucket was for all the decisions a user makes about their insurance policy.

Hypothesis
The UX opportunity to improve the insurance shopping process would be to offload the data entry of Bucket 1, and have the user focus solely on Bucket 2. The resulting expedited experience can be simplified like the following:

Our hypothesis was that by present the price (hook) to the customer much quicker in the truncated shopping process, they are much more likely to convert. The wireframe above was used in our usability tests to validate our assumptions.

Being the Client

This project also put me in the role of being a client to a design agency. The marketing manager and I would sit in on bi-monthly calls with MRM McCann to go over their latest creative, mood boards, media buy, and acquisition strategies.

Sharing the same vernacular with the designers made it easier for me to provide art direction and feedback while ensuring certain design and accessibility standards were taken into account.

Pivoting - Next Steps

One of the great things about this start-up model is the level of comfort the entire team has with changing business models. When the team had to face the reality of blockers that were out of our control, we quickly searched for services that embodied insurance capabilities, but did not require a federal or state insurance filing.

At the end of the day, GM’s interest is in transport. These ideas generated interest from many other teams that owned and managed logistics information and is currently being tested with separate programs within the company.