
Claims Experience
in Insurance
Client
NDA
Role
Service Designer
User researcher
Workshop facilitator
Design team
2 Service Designers
Where
Canada
Duration
4 months

This project is submitted to a NDA.
All content displayed on this page has therefore been modified accordingly .
What?
Service Design
Journey mapping
User research
Comms strategy
Strategy
This project aimed to improve customers' experience during the auto accident claims process by analyzing their current communication journey. Based on the findings, necessary improvements were identified and implemented.

Project timeline
Communication redesign
Redefining the future strategy
The claims department has noticed an increase in customer complaints about the communication strategy during claims procedures. In response, they tasked our team with analyzing the current strategy and proposing improvements for the future.
Some of the main points we were asked to consider were the following:
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Are our current modes of communication well-adapted to convey all of the necessary information to claims users?
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Do users feel like they are receiving clear content?
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Are the communication pieces currently sent to them enough or too much?
The Status Quo
Before the start of this project, we were told that the insurance company communicated through five main channels:
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Email
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SMS
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Phone
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Printed letter
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App
The preferred communication channel is usually defined by the user at the beginning of his claims journey. However, as we were to soon discoever, there could be a few notable exceptions to this.
Customer Journey Mapping
Visualizing the entire claims process for customers across Canada
The starting point to solving this journey was crafting out the current state of all the different claims journeys of customers across six of the different provinces of operations of the insurance company within Canada.
The complete timeline was completed through an iterative process which involved relevant stakeholders across the business during two different workshops.

User research
Recruitment
The second logical phase was to speak to the end users of this communication journey: the insurance company's customers.
In order to recruit a relevant number of users (between 15 and 20), we went through their adjusters.
This meant first meeting with them and briefing them on the types of customers we were looking for, the claims process we were focusing on specifically, and our timelines.


Part of the brief given to adjusters for user recruitment
Interviews
This approach enabled us to successfuly recruit 20 end users interviewed across three different weeks.




Key takeaways
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Users can be comprehensive with delays as long as the communication received is transparent and upfont about it.
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Receiving many comms in a timely manner is not seen as invasive, on the contrary: it comforts users on the fact that their claim is moving forward.
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Users' preferred mode of comm needs to be accounted for at the opening of the claim and throughout the entire process. Otherwise, they may just miss relevant information.
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There needs to be a straightforward way for adjusters to keep track of the file of one same customer. Otherwise, the process is perceived as inconsistent and confusing by the user.
Design of the future state
Co-creatng with Users
Once we identified the major gaps in the current communication strategy, we planned two co-creation sessions with two user groups (French & English) to design the future state of what the claims communication strategy should look like.


Some examples of activities done during the workshop
Key Learnings
Throughout this whole design process, I learned that:
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This project reaffirmed that as a service designer, I don’t need to be an expert in the subject matter but should focus on engaging experts to extract relevant insights for solving the problem at hand. My interest in energy grew naturally as I gained knowledge through the process.
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Seeking external perspectives, especially from those not deeply involved in a project, is invaluable when feeling stuck or overwhelmed. Expert input, particularly during uncertain moments, provided concrete evidence and real user insights, ensuring my project addressed genuine needs and challenges.
Next steps
In the future, I would like to proceed with the following steps (based on expert input during our final project presentation in London):
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What if the app featured a robot advisor to handle all energy transactions? This would simplify the process, create a new passive income stream for users, and encourage sustained engagement with sustainable behaviors.
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Currently, HACID generates answers based on user queries. What if the app included a feature for community-based answers, similar to Reddit? This would allow users to receive both AI-generated insights tailored to their data and grid prices, as well as community-generated advice based on shared experiences, providing a comprehensive view for decision-making.
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Experts advised caution about nudging all users simultaneously during high energy price periods. Like in finance, if everyone sells energy back to the grid at the same time, prices could drop, leading to poor outcomes. A solution could be using HACID to stagger notifications, prioritizing households strategically for each wave of high prices.