Life Insurance Case Study
/The Problem
The customer, a large, well-known life insurance company, needed a complete overhaul of their antique automated phone system. They didn’t know where to begin.
Where to begin
I met with the stakeholders and we made a list of all the functionality they wanted, all their business rules around those functions, as well as details of the back-end values that were available for use. The customer had already a persona defined, as well as user archetypes. They also had a voice talent already contracted.
Whiteboard the design structure
Using the inherent structure of their business, we worked out a plan for the high level flow that would fit with the persona. Authentication determines the policy type, and each policy type has a unique subset of functionality. The idea was to build reusable functions that would be called when chosen from a given menu. After discussion and refinement, the business agreed on the approach.
Sample conversations
I put together sample conversations so the customer could get a feel for the overall experience. This allows the customer to see how their business rules would be implemented. This also gave us a chance to verify that the back-end variables were mapping to the right fields.
Complete the specification
Now that the customer liked the samples, the detailed specification could be written. While writing, I worked closely with the development team to ensure back-end accuracy, and with the QA team to ensure that all the use cases would be covered. The resulting documentation, including all the error handling and global behavior, was handed off to the development team.
Deployment
Because of the close communication between design and development, the project deployed without any major defects. The SIT and UAT passed without any problems. The first round of metrics showed that the containment rate doubled, reducing their call center expenses by several million dollars in the first year alone.
