When targeted effectively at solving a problem, user experience delivers results. Here’s a recent customer project that Each&Other delivered for Zurich Middle East.
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ome organisations today question the value of investing in great design. Regular readers of this blog will know our feelings on this: we believe that investment in great UX pays itself back in spades. This month, I’m sharing a story about this principle working in practice – with superb, visible results.Let’s start at the beginning, because for design and UX to show its value, there is arguably a gap to be addressed in the first place.
In 2021, Zurich Middle East approached us with just such a gap. In the UAE market, it provides a range of financial services products, some a hybrid of life insurance and savings. Some customers were high earners and the company also wanted to attract customers from other socio-economic groups.
Zurich International Online (ZIO) was the name of its customer portal which had limited capabilities for customer self-serve until that point, but wanted to change that. It named the initiative Tikram, which is an Arabic word that can mean “you will be treated with generosity” or “you’re welcome”. It was a digital transformation project that aimed to deliver an integrated and consistent experience to customers across multiple channels, where technology would give the company a competitive advantage.
Zurich’s customer base was very tech savvy: 76% had engaged with the company digitally but in the background, most of the processes were manual at the time and the company could only complete 14% of transactions digitally. Everything else would either be handled via email or phone call, which was a source of frustration for customers. After analysing the most common requests that customers would speak to customer care consultants about, Zurich had identified 24 tasks. So this was the challenge.
When we became involved in the project, we drilled down even further to look at some of the tasks identified by Zurich, tasks that customers weren't able to complete. We were always looking out for ways to make processes more efficient.
For example, updating a credit card took 12.4 minutes on average when interacting with an agent over the phone. Moving this online would allow the customer to complete this by themselves and it would take them less than a minute. By improving the experience and speeding up response times, Zurich also aimed to increase customer loyalty.
The ultimate vision is to give customers the freedom to switch between channels at any time during the process, from live chat to chatbot, or from WhatsApp to the web. At the time of writing, the desktop and mobile versions have been delivered.
One of the tasks that customers wanted to do was to change the frequency of payments or set up payment holidays. All this had been happening against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, when many people’s work suddenly stopped. Without a steady income, their first reaction was to cancel savings or investment plans. By giving customers an easy way to lower their monthly premiums, the adoption of the service helped customers at their time of need and helped Zurich retain these customers.
In the research phase, working closely with the project stakeholders, we held workshops to review existing customer journeys, identify pain points and opportunities, and map new journeys while looking for similarities that would allow us to make some processes familiar and repeatable for the customer. That part of the project brought lots of issues to the surface, like making clear what the customer needed to do to take a certain action like manage their fund or change beneficiaries.
We designed a CX that would be consistent across all channels. Our guiding principle was to help the customer understand at all times what their options were, what action they needed to take, and what the outcome would be. We followed a process to make the flows through each customer journey easy and consistent. This way, customers would always be informed and therefore make the proper choices.
I’m a big believer in always explaining to somebody, before they start into a process, what will happen. They should know what’s possible. Then they should have the chance to review what they've done at the end: they see wording on screen telling them ‘Here’s what your changes will look like. Are you sure?’
We designed the interface to get out of the customer’s way. They have a mission to complete and they need to focus on what they’re doing without being blinded by advertising or flashy features.
We look to use the interface to make everything absolutely clear to the customer and ensure there are no surprises for them. Otherwise, the worst thing is, they spend a lot of time going down the flow of a particular process but then hit an obstacle and then they drop off due to frustration.
Here’s a sample of the 14 processes we improved:
Zurich had forecasted 30% adoption in services by year one and an 80% adoption by year three. In fact, by the end of the first year, adoption was 40% ahead of that original goal. Adoption of services meant capacity creation in the back end for more customer value added work and efficiencies leading to financial benefits. These weren’t the only benefits.
In fact, Zurich subsequently measured customer satisfaction and found it was 2x what it had been under the old process.
Wilson Varghese, one of the senior stakeholders at Zurich, told us: “I’m pleased to say that Project Tikram has been successful on many counts. Our adoption rates are tracking better than the business case at 42% adoption within year one, and we expect the trajectory to remain strong. The customer satisfaction ratings have also been excellent at 2x on average over the ‘as is’ processes; most NPS scores are greater than +60. So there has been strong validation by the customer. On the financial savings side, we are also tracking well to the business plan.”
“Externally the project won two awards in the Middle East Market: Best Digital transformation company of the year at the Gulf Business Tech Awards and CX Initiative of the year at the CX and Loyalty Summit, MENA. Internally the project was a finalist at the Group project professionals award. All very validating stuff, but a lot more to do yet and this gives us good momentum. Once again, many thanks for your partnership in enabling this success.”
Once the project started gathering steam, between Each&Other handling design and the developer partner working on the outputs, it quickly became obvious Zurich could achieve a powerful shift towards digital transformation. It now has a way to deal with customers across many channels – with the potential to add conversational AI in the future.
For this part of the project, Zurich has been able to significantly extend the percentage of transactions that can be fully handled digitally. Above all, it’s done so while putting the customer front and centre, considering their needs and serving them effectively. It’s UX in action, delivering on the investment.