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Digital Self-Serve
Harnessing research and design to identify a new revenue stream customers love
Growing disappointment with a phone-based status quo
First, a bit of context: Policygenius is a NYC-based insurance marketplace with a mission to help people get the financial protection they need and have them feel good about it.
My scope as Lead Product Designer on the Life Insurance Growth team focused on boosting conversion through the product funnel — a series of health and lifestyle questions that determined what products customers were eligible for (and their premiums) before being called by our Sales team to complete the application.
But this funnel was just a small part of the full life insurance customer journey, and we felt a lack of visibility around the fulfillment touchpoints that followed. Further, over hundreds of customer interviews I heard repeatedly from people that the handoff from a digital funnel to a high-pressure phone call was letting them down.
Key customer quote 💡
I know you're asking for this to contact me. In this day and age, I prefer everything online until I'm actually ready to sign up. I'm not crazy about giving my email and especially my phone number. I probably would not fill this out. I would look for a place where I could continue looking at pricing online.
- April
Key customer quote 💡
I wasn't expecting to be asked for this contact information. It's not something that I would necessarily want at this point, because I would wanna do everything online. I wouldn't want you to call me. Like I said earlier, I was kind of excited not to have that happen.
- Andrew
The full process detail of this case study is confidential. Please get in touch to discuss further!
A company first: auditing touchpoints along the full journey
I set out to audit the full end-to-end customer journey, to learn what customers were encountering.
Scrappy audit of touchpoints along the full customer journey
I connected with colleagues on Product (CRM) and Ops (Sales & Case Management) to map customer touchpoints across phases of the fulfillment process that followed ‘handoff’ from the product funnel.
The problems we found:
A forced phone call that came before customers felt ready to interact with an agent
Handoffs from team to team that resulted in a disjointed customer experience
Heavy reliance on Ops to manually complete tasks that lent themselves to automation — which was expensive for the business (ARPU/CAC), and increasingly out-of-step with customer expectations for digital self-service
Full service map of the customer journey
I wanted to deepen my understanding of the problem, and help leadership visualize it. I did further research and created a more thorough Service Map with 5 layers:
Customer Actions
Technology Touchpoints
Ops (Human) Touchpoints
Ops Backstage Actions
Support Processes
Identifying opportunities for efficiency & profitability
Another factor here was the broader economic context: like other tech companies, we came under pressure to increase efficiency and become profitable following dramatic shifts in the economy in 2022.
I presented my audit findings to executive leadership, and built the case for 'Digital Self-Service' initiatives — empowering customers to complete more of the process digitally, thus reducing costly Ops touches. I tied the opportunity back to increased efficiency, scale, and profitability. Literally, the long-term viability of the company was on the line.
Leadership wanted to see our vision for the customer journey.
Envisioning a digital self-service paradigm shift
Informed by our audit and insights from ongoing customer research, the Design Team collectively put together an end-to-end ‘blue sky’ vision for the customer journey.
In this proactively reimagined experience, customers could accomplish more of the life insurance shopping process online on their own terms, but we still made it easy for them to find our excellent human help when they needed it.
'Blue sky' vision for a self-service customer journey
Collaboration between myself and David al-Ibrahim.
Proof of concept: digitizing the sales call
We called our first Digital Self-Service initiative Continue Online, because after our initial intake, we’d empower customers to finish entering health & lifestyle info online rather than calling them to do it over the phone.
I worked with Ops to identify the questions we’d need to ask, then grouped them into intuitive categories based on prior research. After completing their profile, customers would have the option to receive quotes via email, or via a (now much shorter) confirmation phone call.
Navigating technical constraints to launch an experiment quickly
As I shared evolving designs with engineers, they raised concerns about the long timeline it would require to build this in our native web application.
I worked with my Tech Lead to identify ways to save time. He had the idea to build the experiment in a third-party app called Alchemer rather than our code base — there were limitations in terms of UI and data handling, but the timeline savings were dramatic.
A big win paves the way for more Digital Self-Service initiatives — and the systems to support them
Continue Online was an immediate success — exceeding our expectations for conversion and efficiency gains:
85%
Conversion through the Continue Online flow
30%
Shorter Sales calls for customers who opted into the experience — a major efficiency gain
We gradually expanded the audience for Continue Online as we validated conversion with different segments. And then set out to digitize even more pieces of the customer journey experience in sequence — including showing life insurance quotes from various carriers online.
Early efficiency wins pave the way for larger investments in systems
Standardizing the customer journey
MTR (Milestones, Tasks, Requirements) systematizes workflow requirements across carriers and products to streamline Ops fulfillment processes. [Diagram by Carson Andrews]
Standardizing the data model
The DIF (Dynamic Interview Framework) systematizes relationships in the data model in order to make data capture more dynamic and reusable — and therefore scalable.
It converted one-off, bespoke data capture into a standardized external API able to be leveraged across carriers and manipulated by designers without the assistance of designers, as demonstrated by this recognfigured flow:
Standardizing the design system
MDF (Mortar Dynamic Forms) systematizes input types within the context of the Policygenius Design System (Mortar), in order to be easily called up in code by the DIF (previous). [Visuals by Natalie Colburn]
Digitizing formerly-manual pieces of the customer journey had the added benefit of incentivizing carriers to build digital-application products and offer them on our marketplace. By plugging into our APIs, carriers could expedite applications and offer customers the seamless digital experience they expected — with only a brief compliance phone call, or in some cases, no phone call at all.
The outcome? A shift in strategy, a lofty goal reached — and firmer financial footing
By this point, leadership was fully bought into Digital Self-Service. It became a priority of company strategy, and our teams were resourced to pour gasoline on a fire that in many ways started with my design audit.
After steady month-over-month growth, we hit our goal of 10% of overall application volume being digital — volume with very little overhead cost, and increased overall profitability.
10%
Goal reached: Digital share of total applications
Coda: my ongoing research drives millions in recurring revenue growth
Over the years I've conducted hundreds of interviews with life insurance buyers, continuously gathering fresh insights and socializing them with various teams within Policygenius. I formatted insights into a research repository to make them more accessible, and regularly curated recommendations from this to prompt action by other designers I mentor.
Research repository in Dovetail
1:1 customer interviews (and counting) conducted over three years
Research reports (and counting) published and socialized within the company
I previously mentioned that digitizing our acquisition journey incentivized carriers to build digital application products for our platform. One carrier — Legal & General America — went further than others by offering a fully-digital product with a quick application and no phone call for certain customer segments.
Because this product was such a win-win for our business and for customers, we wanted to boost its selection rate. We weren't sure why customers weren't choosing a more convenient product at higher rates.
I went through past research and noticed an insight theme that felt especially pertinent given our goal to increase the share of LGA applications:
Research-backed insight 💡
Customers are motivated to minimize time and effort during an application, but only if the 'easier' option does not feel like a compromise on carrier integrity (meaning, a customer's perception of likelihood to payout in the case of death).
In short, I guessed that customers were attracted by LGA's convenience, but (incorrectly) suspected that a simpler application process meant a less reputable carrier and less secure policy. In fact, LGA was one of our top-rated carriers.
I proactively prototyped and tested the hypotheses that displaying application process steps on carrier quote cards — along with superlatives from Policygenius Content library — would push more traffic to the LGA fully-digital product. This tested well in my usability testing, and I pushed for a full A/B test.
This was an enormous win — resulting in boosted LGA selection rates (and higher conversion in general), and a nearly $2M boost in recurring annual revenue.
50.48%
From 43.95%
Policy select rate on quotes page
15%
From 13.18%
Conversion into Underwriting
325
Additional applications into Underwriting per month
From $348,321
Contribution margin at Underwriting
Additional monthly revenue
$1.74M
Additional annual revenue
Winning A/B variant: displaying application process steps on quote cards, along with superlatives from the Policygenius Content library. [Visual collaboration with Sara Gong]
