The Hartford
Service design
Reshaping the insurance story for small businesses
My starting line
The Hartford provides insurance coverage for small business owners, including protections like workers' compensation in case an employee is injured. However, their Net Promoter Scores (NPS) were significantly low, prompting them to ask:
“What are the biggest challenges our customers face, and how can we simplify their lives?”
— The Hartford
My team
1 Service designer (me)
1 Visual designer
1 Researcher
1 Project manager
Our goal
Simplify the process of insuring small businesses and ease the burden of annual audits, making it easier for business owners to focus on what matters most.
My role
Sr. Service designer
Responsible workshop planning & facilitation, research support, concept creation, and service blueprint creation.
My process
1
Research
A researcher and I traveled around Connecticut visiting small business owners, from a small ice cream shop in Wilton to a fitness center in Derby.
12
Stakeholder interviews
11
Customer interviews
4
Ride-along observations
5000+
Customer servey responses
2
Personas
Understanding the pains of small business owners, allowed me to create 5 unique personas encapsulating their key behaviors, values, characteristics, and challenges.
3
Current state journey
I mapped the typical journey of business owners throughout the year. It included the emotional journey, every touch point along the way, and a backstage systems map.
The majority of customer pain could be directly correlated with the antiquated and piecemeal technologies behind The Hartford infrastructure.
4
Target state service blueprint
I designed a future state customer journey to alleviate pains, and increase satisfaction. It included context scenarios for each stage of the journey along with digital touchpoints, staff support and backstage systems that need to be in place.
The problem
The word “audit” scared customers, and the process of the audit was too big and daunting.
My solution
Get rid of the audit!
Instead of a big once-a-year thing, I laid out a Policy Checkup journey spread out across the year with simple bite sized steps.
Balancing customer and business value
Customer value
Increased satisfaction
Decreased roadblocks
Decrease in support needs
Improve audit completion rates
Decrease audit time
Business value
Decrease premium leakage
Decrease in amount of serviced audits for each channel
Decrease number of customer service calls in proportion of the number of audits for digital channel
My solution
Marcus has a guided experience throughout the year enabling him to come back at will and easily see his progress with:
Checklists (a)
Helpful tips (b)
Informative content (c)
Guided reflexive questioning (a) helps Marcus know his employees have the right coverage, and that his policy is accurate.
Simple steps (b) like connecting his payroll to the system avoids him having to manually enter all his employees and salaries.
At the end of the year, Marcus has no surprises.
He can even see business performance insights and predictions (a) based on other companies similar to his. As value goes up, premiums do too. Marcus can easily see what changed and knows what to expect.
And Marcus always knows his Checkup progress (b) so he never needs to guess about how much is left to do.