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Quote and apply

2010
Please not that this project is in a logged-in environment and not accessible by the public

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Back in 2010 when I first started at Vitality my first major task was the redesign of the companies quote and application system. I’d never even heard the term UX before but this was to be my first UX project. Vitality sells medical insurance, life insurance and serious illnes cover (SIC) via a network of brokers in a B2B2C model.
 They had an old and creaky quote and apply (Q&A hereon in) system that was outdate in terms of branding and also had terrible UX. Advisers hated it, advisers also typically worked for several insurance providers so if we could provide them a superior experience then Vitality would become their preferred provider.

BUSINESS OBJECTIVES

  • [Impact]: Drive sales and revenue
  • Cost savings and efficiencies by increasing straight-through quotations (not needing further underwriting) and reduce costs
  • Become our advisers preferred supplier by creating a superiour Q&A experience to our comtpetitors<./li>
  • Enable advisers to quickly produce multiple quotes per client.

USER NEEDS

  • Get a quote for a client quickly
  • Product multiple quotes per client covering a spectrum of cost (policy premium per month/year)
  • To get a quote that combines multiple products

Empathise

The first thing we did was to conduct field research with advisers across the country with three primary goals:

  • Gain insights into how their process of creating quotes for clients looked like
  • What were the key pain points of the existing system
  • Do competitive analysis into other systems from other providers that they were using

Analytics also gave us a good starting point and enabled us to:

  • Establish a base time for an average quote with the current system
  • See that users were clicking-through all of the tabs in the quote system, even the ones not relevant

Insights

It was imperative that we get outside of London in order to see how our advisers across the country used the system. Due to time and budget restraints we conducted sessions in London, Milton Keynes and Southampton. Some were single-tie advisers (only selling Vitality products), some sold multiple offerings from various compaines and some were brokerages using portals that could produce quotes from multiple providers.
 Some worked in call centers, some had their own offices (independant broker) and some went to prospects homes to produce quotes (we were very privileged to have spent a day with one broker going to several of his clents at their homes).
 Some brokers would go through the entrire Q&A process in one go, others preferred to collect key details face-to-face/over the phone and then produce quotes later and one adviser working just off Grosvenor square even preferred to note all details on paper and hand-off to an assistant to then produce the quotes as they eres too traditional to use a computer!

  • Clients typically had a price-point in mind for their premium and wanted to know what levels of cover that would get them
  • Quotes were policy based not user based
  • Confusing proprietary terms that were not common to the market (SIC v CIC)
  • Because the interface was split across multiple tabs for different sections and products, users were clicking through every single tab not realising that they could simply skip sections if they were not relevant.
  • The system was slow and prone to errors expecially when connectivity was an issue (advisers working remotley with laptops using 3G dongles) sometimes reulting in lost quotes and having to start over
  • Develop suggestion matrix
  • Develop a 'plan based' system using algorithms
  • Split quotes for comparison
Straight-through quote completions were increased by 20%

Ideation

From the insights we collected we had several key outcomes for our users. Quotes should use the client as the key entity so that multiple quotes could be attached to that entity and not the production of multiple quotes that refferenced the person.
 The system had to have the ability to save quotes to prevent data loss (connection interrupted) and so that they could be worked on in multple sessions and edited later.
 Saved quotes should also be available to use as a template or preset in order to generate new quotes. Products should be clearly differentiated and all options readily viewable.
 An intitial quote shpuld provide functionality to generate two more quotes across a realistic price banding (original quote and upper/lower price banding).
 There should be the option to do a cover or premium based quote with the latter showing a range of options based upon an initial premium amount.

Prototyping and testing

From the above we started ideating solutions and sketching-put prototypes.
 User journeys were mapped-out for the quote process. Wireframes weere sketched and reviewed with key stakeholders to refine UI and user flows on a daily basis.
 Interactive prototypes were produced working with Space01 agency to conduct user testing, gather insights and refine designs.

Final designs were prepared in Photoshop(!) and handed-off to developers.

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