While I was actively involved throughout the project, I took a lead on defining the research plan including the research questions, interview protocols, recruitment plans, designing the research surveys and writing the product recommendations.
Client Challenge
Indiana Farmers Insurance has an aging customer base. While well positioned to serve its current members, the company and much of its distribution channel is not familiar with or prepared to effectively serve the next generations of insurance consumers.
What We Did
Research to understand the insurance and financial attitudes and beliefs of those in the millennial and Generation Z groups
Created journey maps to identify how each group prefers to journey through the customer lifecycle and specific user experiences that must be in place to meet their needs
Identified company service gaps and outlined product recommendations
What do millennials think about the insurance process and how are insurance agencies targeting millennials?
Secondary Research
In order to familiarize ourselves with the current insurance market, millennial customer base, and the experiences insurance companies are providing to customers, we looked at market research studies. Through these we learned that millenials have:
Have a delay in life events; consider home or life insurance at a later life stage compared to baby boomers
Have debt; are more likely to be financially constrained because of student debts
Are digital natives; 87% of consumers turn to search engines first then a phone call twice as likely for millennials to buy/interact with insurance with an online presence compared to companies that’s completely offline (Brown & Kim, 2017).
Value company brand and interpersonal connections; 78% of shoppers who had previous relationships with their advisors bought life insurance (Intramark Insurance, 2020).
Bodystorming
Since most of our team fell in a similar age group to the one we were researching, each of us went through the process of 'purchasing insurance' online and documented our experiences and preferences.
Through this activity we were able to identify areas where Indiana Farmers Insurance was lacking in relation to its competitors.
Recruitment Survey
From the survey we learned that:
For first insurance its mostly auto/renters; 4 purchased online, 5 through agents, 4 family reference
50% rely on family & friends recommendations, 10% look at Google Reviews
For buying/changing insurance, price is a main factor
Main changing companies causes include price and relocating
Main satisfaction influencers are; positive claims experience, customer serviceand price
User Interviews
Following the survey, we conducted user interviews with the goals to:
Through the interviews we learned that:
User Interviews Summary
Company Stakeholder Interviews
In order to better understand the companies process and be able to provide product recommendations, we conducted interviews with company different stakeholders each of whom provided us unique insights
Visualizing Research
We summarized our research using user personas, user journey maps and infographics.
Infographics were used to present the behaviors of this user group
Labelled Infographic
Now lets see their journey through different stages of insurance lifecycle
Customer Journey Map
Identifying Service Gaps
Using our user research and analysis of existing market trends, we were able to identify gaps within the existing processes of the company.
How can the customer lifecycle be improved?
Product Recommendations
Recommendations were made for each of the different stages of the customer lifecycle that Indiana Farmers Insurance follows
Product Recommendations for each stage
Reflection
This was my first experience working on a consulting project and leading research for it. The experience taught me a few important things
Presenting Research - This was a research heavy project and through working on customer journey maps and infographics, I learned that when it comes to research, presentation and visualization are key to making it digestible different stakeholders.
Communicating Expectations - Since this was a research focused project, I encouraged my team to also think about what they wanted out of it and the skills they wanted to learn, which led to us being more open with our clients and working on product recommendations after a certain amount of research had been done.
Learning Together - This was my first introduction to the Purdue Design Studio and I loved the experience of not just mentoring my juniors on research but also learning new skills from them such as working in Figma.
Example of how leading providers provide online services vs Indiana Farmers traditional methods of contacting agent for quotes
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