Customer research
into the travel claims experience

Supporting the digital transformation and future roadmap of the claims process and service for nib Travel.

 

Brand: nib Travel
Role: Experience / Service Design

Challenge

Nib Travel undertook a large transformation project to move their claims experience into the cloud.

As head of Experience, my role was to complete research and analysis of the current claims experience, competitive and comparative analysis, and develop a future experience roadmap to assist multiple teams in bringing the experience to life.

Tools

Metrics & Analytics

Online Servey

Stakeholder interviews

Competitive Reviews

 

Discovery

A month of research, 100+ cups of tea, and being initiated into the dark arts of BI with Tableau, I created a detailed report offering an in-depth look at the current claims experience from a customers point of view. 

With the ongoing work to move into a new world of CRM and integrated Claims System, this report gave insights into the current state, revealing where potential opportunities lay, ignite discussion and allow for perspective change across teams.

 

Diving into the claims data

With access to the data warehouse, IDR, post claims survey, claims emails from desk, wrap-up tags from purecloud and sales reports, Tableau was used to blend the data and explore trends, behaviour and experience the customers have whilst making a claim during an entire calendar year.

Data Warehouse

Connecting to the Data Warehouse exploring current claims data

Post claims survey

Blending the Data Warehouse with the post claim survey to reveal customer stories

IDR Data

Blending the data further with IDR reveals the true heros and villans

Calls & Emails

Looking into Verbatim, Calls and Emails we uncovered the impact

Total number of claims accepted vs declined Luggage and medical claims contribute to 70% of claims 27% of luggage claims had a high level of dissatisfaction

UX Tools

Customer interviews

Customer Journey Mapping

Personas

Service/Experience Map

Process & Task Diagrams

 

Experience Mapping

The next step in the process was mapping out the existing customer experience. The aim was to select and studying travellers who had made a recent claim (Luggage/Medical/Delays).

The aim with the interviews was to favour depth over sample size and have the participants walk through how they use the claims service, exploring not only their behaviours but also the meaning behind those behaviours.

Understanding the mental models that exist today, was insightful and necessary to point toward a service design architecture for the future.

One to one interviews mapping out the claims journey 10 Customer interviews exploring the end to end experience

Key insights from the research

After going through verbatims provided by unsatisfied travellers who submitted luggage claims, the following key pain points became clear.

Expectations

The misunderstanding of what is covered and when, was the highest driver of dissatisfaction

Timeliness

The time taken to process the claim was another key reason for discontent

Documentation

The amount of documentation required was another key contributor

Communication

Communication was inconsistent or overall lack of communication throughout their claim

Personas

Based on the user research I created 6 personas and scenarios. These served as reference for the future product development process.

 

• Each persona had a scenario that identified a unique aspect of the claims experience.

 

• The information about each persona focused on values, goals, frustrations and jobs to be done, which served as a tool to influence both technical and UX design decisions.

Customer Journey Maps

Using the research data, from the customer survey verbatims, along with the qualitative interviews, we mapped out 6 primary claims scenarios based around each persona. This helped to understand the physical, environmental and emotional state of the user at the moment of the claim and through the entire claims journey.

This process significantly influenced the development of important design decisions and key assessment criteria when developing the future claims platform. Some examples are as follows:

• Encourage customers to reach out as soon as an event has occurred.
• Be transparent around the process, demonstrate value and change the ingrained norm of distrust.
• When things go wrong customers felt vulnerable and needed to be reassured at the point of first contact.
• Simplify the claims experience and be transparent around what information is needed and why.

The End to End Experience

Looking beyond the claims experience I created a Service Blueprint mapping the entire end to end experience, where we identified some of the following key areas of opportunity and solutions to frame and change the future claims experience.

• Clearer language of cover in the purchase path
• Changes to the PDS specifically around unattended items and exclusions making them more visible
• Updating the customer service centre comms and IVR to help manage expectations around service levels and claims wait times
• Changes to content pre-claim to reduce under excess claims
• Re-design of the claims outcome templates for claims managers to create a more comprehensive story to assist users in understanding the outcome decision.

Service blueprint of the full end to end customer experience

Impact

• Identified key pain points, needs and expectations for different claims scenarios.
• Created a clear roadmap of areas of opportunity.
• Set up a series of co-design workshops to explore both immediate tactical as well as long term solutions for each area of opportunity.
• Assisted tech and delivery teams to evaluate and select best cloud based software solutions from a customer experience perspective.
• Built out strategic roadmap for the future claims experience.
• Broad communication and championed the importance of Human Centred Design principals across the organisation.