Automating and digitizing the car insurance buying process
Turner's Cars Insurance
Timeframe
May '23 - June '23
My Role
Overview
Turner’s Cars is New Zealand’s leading used car dealership providing a one-stop-shop experience.
They want to conduct a re-design of their manual motor vehicle insurance system and process, focusing on researching into new methods that will increase customer satisfaction.
Goal
Turner’s Cars insurance isn’t widely advertised. On top of this, the current process is very manual heavy and requires customers to call Turner’s to get an insurance quote.
How can we help car owners access insurance information and plans easily?
Introduction
Interviews revealed customer awareness gaps and limited accessibility on the Turner’s Cars website
Conducting interviews with the Insurance Manager of Turner’s Cars and a customer allowed us to ask questions that focused on the business goals and the current process from the stakeholder, and pains points and needs from the customer.
Customers aren’t aware that Turner’s Cars offers insurance services based on the initial website and social media adverts.
To receive a quote and purchase insurance customers are required to call customer support or visit a store
Unable to view and compare plan coverage and prices directly on the website.
Site navigation lacks clarity and decreases the task response time for users to find the insurance page.
Customer frustrations with the inability to buy insurance at their own convenience.
Our aim was to determine the key problems that would shape our MVP. We used a user persona, empathy map and current customer journey map based on the customer we interviewed so we could empathize with their insurance experience.
Car owners need to ensure that they’re safe when they’re driving. If they can’t get insurance quickly, then they can’t feel safe on the road.
Define
Defining our problem
After identifying the pain points through the Empathize phase we framed our problem into a How Might We statement and User Story.
How might we?
How might we improve the awareness and accessibility of Turner’s Cars insurance services, so customers can purchase insurance more effectively?
What do our customers want?
As a customer looking to buy car insurance, I want to be able to clearly recognize where and how I can purchase insurance online, so I can be covered by a plan as quickly as I need.
Ideate
Designing for users is designing for a solution
With our problem statement and user story framed our team began the ideation phase, starting with a collective site audit to discuss visual issues with the current website that could be reworked.
Using a Crazy 8’s activity to generate ideas we discussed potential solutions. Considering how they could be refined and implemented by taking into account developer feedback on feasibility, we were then able to narrow down a solution.
An automatic online insurance quote process and purchase, with the option to save the quote so users could return to their quote.
Buying insurance from competitors takes too long and feels tedious.
As someone who has never had any experience with car insurance, I had the added challenge of understanding what goes into a standard process. By conducting a competitive analysis we were able to see what the current market had to offer. We found that most insurance company processes used 6+ pages just for the getting a quote.
Revising navigation so it’s streamlined and easy for users
A hybrid card sorting method was for us to understand how users group together parts of the insurance process. The labels created represented the steps in an insurance process, while the cards were questions and information that were required from a user to get insurance.
The results helped us create a new user flow and information architecture that aligns with user expectations.
Proposed new user flow and information architecture
Protoype and Testing
Visualizing our user flow and ideas
We sketched out ideas on how to layout the home page, insurance page and the quote process. From there we took the best aspects of the sketches and turned them into wireframes.
Making improvements to the design with the help of real user feedback
We prototyped our wireframes so they could be used in our user testing.
Our test involved 3 participants, who all had varying experience with purchasing car insurance. By outlining our research goals and assumptions prior to the testing, we could determine how successful the project based off the initial reactions with users.
Research Goals
Is the revised user flow streamlined to complete tasks easily
Does the new design make information more accessible
We used the feedback gathered from the user testing to further iterate the wireframes functionality and layout. Due to the limited timeframe of this project this was the only iteration phase before moving on to the final solution.
Before feedback
After feedback
Solution
Automating and digitizing the insurance buying process
The goal was to streamline the process and reduce the amount of screens for a quick checkout. Additionally we also redesigned the existing home and insurance page to increase visibility Turner’s insurance and reduce the amount of clutter to improve the usability of screens.
In terms of style we modernized the overall design, but stayed loyal to the original company colours as it was important for us to maintain the strong branding impact Turner’s Cars have.
Automatic online quote process
Moving the service online gives customers readily available access to buying insurance.
This makes it more efficient for both customers and staff, as they no longer need to call over the phone to get a quote.
Quote retrieval
The option to save the quote, allowing customers to return to the quote page where they can review or continue to purchase.
This lessens the pressure placed on customers to buy insurance after receiving a quote, allowing them to make effective decisions at their own pace.
Reflection
What did I learn?
Working on this project provided me with great insight into how new technology methods can enhance outdated, manual processes and the ways that it can be beneficial for the business and customers. From starting with a basic problem to a designed solution, it was rewarding to see the progress I made over the few weeks.
As the timeframe of this project was limited to four weeks I wasn’t able to implement or develop further solutions. In a future iteration I would consider researching more into solutions such as:
Developing the Chatbot functions further to respond to different user messages, such as sending links to help the user navigate the website, responding to general questions, and connecting to a live support team.
Continuing the insurance project by establishing an online process to make an insurance claim online and renew or change the current payment plan