Reimagining Optional Life Pre-enrollment
Getting started: FAQ PDF
People like you webpage
Challenge
How might we improve the end-to-end experience in the pre-enrollment customer journey for purchasing Optional Life and Optional Critical Illness Insurance?
Solutions
Solution #1: Getting Started FAQ – A digital tool and an interactive PDF that provides a simple breakdown on the key things people should consider when thinking about Life and Critical Illness Insurance with quick, easy to read answers and resources to aid their decision-making process.
Solution #2: People Like You – An interactive digital tool that provides a variety of scenarios to help people think about different options they might want to consider now, or in the future, when it comes to Life Insurance and Critical Illness Insurance.
Business Sponsor
Optional Benefits - Canada
Business Goals
Increase plan member enrollment initiation for Optional Life (OL) and Optional Critical Illness (OCI)
Identify a North Star and additional opportunity areas to reimagine
Define metrics/KPIs to set Optional Benefits up for further learning and success measuring
Core Team
11 people across 5 business units
Global Innovation
Canada Optional Benefits Product
Canada Marketing
Canada HCD
Canada Advanced Analytics
Stakeholders
33 people across 15 business units
Global Innovation
Individual Insurance
Individual Insurance - Compliance
GB and Individual Insurance - Legal
GB - Risk and Compliance
GB Marketing
GB Product
Canada HCD
Manulife.ca
Data Analytics
NPS
SEO
Speech and Insights
GB Contact Center
GB Underwriting
My Roles
Project Lead (Partnered with PM)
UX Lead
Research Lead
Content Lead
UI Lead
Discovery Research
Optional benefits are available for purchase in addition to the benefits people already get through their employer. This project is focused on the period of time before members officially enroll in Optional Life Insurance and/or Optional Critical Illness Insurance.
This project had a very broad goal of trying to find ways to reimagine and improve the pre-enrollment experience for Optional Life (OL) and Optional Critical Illness Insurance (OCI). To do this I focused our research on better understanding members, learning about their decision-making process and associated behaviors, and then defining a North Star to help us discover key opportunities for bettering the pre-enrollment experience.
Understanding our current OL/OCI members
Understanding user motivations and barriers to purchasing/not purchasing OL/OCI
Identifying how the pre-enrollment experience affects the purchase process
Research Objectives
Created a research plan
Learned more about OL/OCI benefits Manulife offers
Reviewed existing documentation
Partnered with Advanced Analytics to pull data from our current OL/OCI plan members and created a quantitative report and a new PowerBI dashboard to give the Optional Benefits team a snapshot of our plan members
Leveraged data from 853,411 eligible plan members
Crafted 2 surveys with screeners:
38 Manulife member participants (Purchasers & Non-purchasers) via UserTesting
400 General public participants (200 Purchasers & 200 Non-purchasers via Qualtrics
Desk Research
Advanced Analytics PowerBI dashboard
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Objectives:
Gain further insight into OL/OCI product/operations flows/journeys/etc.
Learn about known pain points in the pre-enrollment experience
Identify areas of high interest within the business
Define areas of focus
Created an interview guide
Conducted 13 (30 minute) virtual interviews via Teams
Stakeholder Interviews
Created an interview guide and screener
Recruited 30 interview participants via UserTesting: (Had to do 2 rounds of recruiting due to low participation rates)
5 Manulife members (Purchasers)
5 Manulife members (Non-purchasers)
10 General public (Purchasers)
10 General public (Non-purchasers)
Conducted 19 (1hr) virtual interviews via UserTesting
2 Manulife members (Non-purchasers)
7 General public (Non-purchasers)
10 General public (Purchasers)
Customer Interviews
Used Mural as my virtual workspace
Transferred key points from my (Purchaser) interviews and created an affinity map
Transferred key points from my (Non-purchaser) interviews and created an affinity map
Conducted a holistic analysis and synthesis with all key insights from:
Both surveys
Purchaser interviews
Non-purchasers interviews
Advanced Analytics’ report
Created 4 proto personas to better understand our customers and to identify what type of customer I should focus on to have the biggest impact
Analysis and Synthesis
All images below are blurred for privacy purposes
Purchaser affinity map
Non-purchaser affinity map
Holistic synthesis
Unclear Kerry (Non-purchaser) Pro-Persona
Novice Nico (Purchaser) Pro-Persona
Not the Time Terry (Non-purchaser) Pro-Persona
Knowledgeable Noel (Purchaser) Pro-Persona
Barriers to Purchase:
Overall confusion and lack of clarity
The value wasn’t clear
It wasn’t the right time for them
It’s a poor digital experience (Once you go to enroll)
Themes and Insights
Motivators to Purchase:
When it’s an easy path
When they are informed
When life events bring it top of mind (Triggers decision making)
When their employers reach out to them (Triggers action to purchase)
Opportunity Areas
How might we better educate plan members on OL/OCI so we can make their decision-making process easier?
How might we simplify and clarify the way we talk about Optional Benefits so our plan members are less confused?
How might we assist plan members throughout the purchase process, so they feel supported along their journey?
How might we be more proactive and anticipate what our plan members might need?
How might we identify and engage with plan members who are ready to purchase, in order to take some of the work off them in figuring out how and when to get started?
How might we simplify the enrollment process for plan members in order to make it a quicker and clearer experience?
I then created a 2x2 matrix measuring Impact vs Effort to help the team prioritize the opportunity areas and decide what we should focus on.
As a team, we decided to focus this project on helping make the path to purchase easier for plan members based on the following:
The “Unclear Kerry” Non-purchaser proto persona
Key Barriers:
Overall confusion and lack of clarity
The value wasn’t clear
Key Motivators:
When it’s an easy path
When they are informed
Opportunity Areas:
Better Educate
Simplify Language
Guidance and Support
Opportunity Prioritization
Opportunity prioritization Matrix
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Design and Development
Conducted a virtual ideation workshop focused on the “Better Educate” opportunity area with the following results:
250+ ideas generated
12 key themes
5 key themes selected for concepting
Conducted a virtual ideation workshop focused on the “Simplify Language” opportunity area with the following results:
190+ ideas generated
10 key themes
4 key themes selected for concepting
Conducted a virtual ideation workshop focused on the “Guidance & Support” opportunity area with the following results:
230+ ideas generated
13 key themes
5 key themes selected for concepting
Ideation
Virtual ideation board
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Selected 9 key things to further define and present to our Business Sponsor
Led a prioritization meeting with our Business Sponsor and key stakeholders to map out each theme on a 2x2 matrix measuring Business Interest vs Time to Delivery and selected 6 themes we would use for concept generation
Scoping
Virtual scoping and concepting board
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Generated 40 rough concepts and selected 15 concepts we wanted to move forward with
Led a dot-voting session where we narrowed it down to 5 concepts
Defined our North Star serving as an ambitious but achievable future state 3 years out to make sure we aligned our concepts with the future vision
Established 6 design principles to keep in mind when building out the concepts
Created low-fi prototypes for each concept
Concepting
Created an interview guide and screener
Recruited 10 testing/interview participants
Conducted 8 (1hr) virtual interviews via UserTesting and tested all 5 concepts with each participant
All 8 participants liked all 5 concepts
Had them rank the concepts in order of their preference
Incorporated the participant feedback into the designs
Worked with the PO to create a proposed plan of attack for the design and build of each of the 5 concepts showing how we can use them to reach our North Star in 3 years
User Testing/Interviews
Virtual user testing synthesis board
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Project Paused
Due to a leadership change and the deprioritization of Optional Benefits, this project was paused indefinitely.
I was able to leave the Business sponsor with a North Star, 5 validated concepts, and a backlog of additional opportunity areas and concepts for future work.
And…We’re Back!
One year and one pandemic later this project was restarted.
Unfortunately, this project revival came with some pretty big constraints:
The only resources I had were 2 people from marketing and a PM we had just hired internally to our team in Canada
We had to narrow it down from 5 to 2 concepts
And, we didn’t have any development resources to make the concepts digital
Ummmmmmmmmm…..
That said, I had already invested so much into the project I was determined to make it happen even if they were just rough MVPs. So, with our small but mighty team, we set off to see what we could accomplish.
Design and Development (Round 2)
Selected the following two concepts from the original five:
Interactive Guided Checklist (This needed to be reworked to not be digital because…constraints)
People like you
Started brainstorming with our new PM
Landed on an interactive FAQ PDF (to replace the digital “Interactive Guided Checklist”) that could be accessed from our public website, and then ran our proposal up through leadership and got the ok to proceed
Poured through my previous work from the year before and got up to speed very quickly
Found contacts for Legal, Risk, and Compliance knowing anything we created would need to go through them, which is NOT a short process, so we wanted to give them a heads up which they appreciated
Found a contact who could help us set up Seismic so we could capture data and analytics from the PDF
Determined what data and analytics we wanted to capture, and what was possible given our software and platforms
Determined where on the public website we could host our MVPs and figured out the SEO details
Connected with our graphic design consultant to give them a heads-up and determine the scope of work
Kickoff
Since we were going to be writing a lot of content, I wanted to do some quick research to narrow in on what words, phrases, topics, behaviors, etc. resonated with people.
Created a research plan
Created a survey and screener
Getting Started: FAQ - 20 participant survey via UserTesting
Learned the top ways people learned about insurance
Determined what questions to include in the tool
People Like You - 20 participant survey and card sort via UserTesting
Learned which scenarios resonated most with users
Learned what scenarios did NOT resonate with the majority of users
User Research
Drafted what we felt were the most important questions people should be asking before deciding to buy Optional Life or Optional Critical Illness Insurance, based on our research
Drafted a LOT of content while making sure we kept our 3 opportunity areas in mind:
Better Educate
Simplify Language
Guidance and Support
Did a LOT of editing
Fact-checked ourselves, researched things we didn’t know, pushed back on each other to make sure we were getting our best, and honestly…had a lot of fun and laughs and even the occasional evening Teams call with a glass of wine. ; )
Created a prototype that we could bring to stakeholders and users for review and feedback
Started with the two marketing folks who were also dealing with very few resources, but we all made it work and had fun in the process (Having a good team can make all the difference!)
Received feedback from Canada HCD, Group Benefits (GB) CX, Group Benefits leadership
Put it through Legal, Risk, and Compliance for a few rounds of edits
Designing (Getting Started: FAQ)
This was the same concept we came up with the year before but we were told this also needed to be a PDF so we got to work.
As we were talking with the person responsible for the public webpage we were embedding the FAQ on, we asked if there was any way we could make a single digital page for this solution so we could offer something digital. Thanks to our good working relationship with that team, they surprisingly ok’d it and said as long as I designed it using our brand guidelines and design system they would help us out and create a digital page on the public website. MAJOR WIN!
Started drafting the content for the “cards” and went through a similar process:
Wrote content
Edited our work
Reviewed with marketing
Made a prototype for feedback and testing
Then a surprising thing happened, when I was showing the person who is putting it on the public website for us what the page was going to look like and my vision for a more interactive experience down the road she said she would do the fully digital multi-page interactive experience for us! YESSSSSSSS
Did more content writing for the additional pages
Edited some more
Drew user flows
Went through Legal, Risk, and Compliance for multiple rounds of edits
Designing (People Like You)
Before building anything, I wanted to make sure the two tools we created would resonate with people and that they were easy to navigate so I conducted 11 (1hr) virtual user tests/interviews via UserTesting:
Created an interview guide and screener
Audience breakdown:
Province
Income Range
Age Range
Gender Identity
Sexual Orientation
Race/Ethnicity
Parental status
11 of 11 participants said they learned something new indicating we achieved our goal in educating them in a way that was simple and easy to understand.
10 of 11 participants thought both of the new tools were helpful, provided valuable information, and were a great place to get started and move them to the next step in their decision-making process.
Two main user types emerged
The Learner - For people with little to no knowledge about insurance who were seeking to learn and better understand their options
The Validator - For people with average or above average knowledge about insurance who wanted to check their assumptions to feel more confident in their choices
Learned what the participants’ next steps would be:
Get options and info specific to them
Learn how much it would cost
User Testing/Interviews
While waiting for Legal, Risk, and Compliance to get back to us with their edits for both solutions we:
Crafted the build-out of the data and analytics reports
Shared our work with GB Health Platform and GB CX teams to identify opportunities for potential integration
Determined benchmarking, keyword setup, and user feedback with the VOICE team
Once we received feedback from Legal, Risk, and Compliance we:
Completed edits and received approval
Addressed some potential concerns with leadership
Handed over all final wording for the visual design of the interactive PDF and the digital web pages
Made some revisions
Got everything translated into French (a mandate when working in Canada)
Presented a pre-delivery report to leadership for awareness and feedback
Reviewed and discussed key questions with the VP of Marketing
Shared work with other business units for awareness prior to the launch
Presented all finalized work to leadership for final launch approval which we got
Build
Virtual user testing synthesis board
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MVP Launch
After a long road, we finally made it and as we were putting everything on the public website we asked, once again because why not, if it would be too much trouble to make a one-page digital version of the FAQ, and once again they said yes! So instead of two PDFs that people have to download, we had two fully digital interactive experiences! A HUGE win.
We benchmarked:
User engagement on the 6 Manulife.ca locations
NPS on the 6 Manulife.ca locations
GB Call center call volume for GB Life & Critical Illness Insurance
We launched in 6 locations on the public website
Sadly, we were not able to find ways to drive traffic to the new tools because there was a concern that it could drive people to a poor enrollment experience which is being worked on.
Getting Started: FAQ - How it works
The landing page will display some general information, a digital FAQ, and a CTA to open the interactive PDF which you can open in a new tab and download once it’s been opened.
Getting started: FAQ interactive PDF
People Like You - How it works
It’s a fully digital and interactive tool where people explore the scenarios they identify with to build their understanding of insurance and the different options available to them through relatable examples.
People like you webpage
User engagement:
Manulife.ca site:
Capture the number of clicks on all pages that have links to the tools
Capture the time on page
Capture bounce rates
Track the source of where users are accessing the tools from
Getting Started: FAQ and People Like You tools (Digital and PDF):
Capture clicks
Capture usage
User feedback:
Gather additional feedback from users on the Manulife.ca through the “Feedback” button containing specific questions related to each tool
Call center volumes:
Track call center volumes within GB and Affinity
Increases/decreases related to OL/OCI insurance, pricing, purchasing, and/or the new tools
Metrics
Unable to obtain visual of metrics from Manulife
Conducted an ideation workshop with 16 people across 13 business units to determine:
How we could drive traffic to the new tools
Where else the tools could be used throughout the business
What potential enhancements/features to put in the backlog for future iterations
Provided a list of recommendations for future iterations and improvements:
7 Key recommendations
9 Getting Started: FAQ recommendations
8 People Like You recommendations
I recommended the following next steps for the GB and Optional Benefits teams:
The Optional Benefits team to determine through data and analytics if they are receiving positive engagement and feedback, if not, conduct additional user research and testing
GB Marketing to create GB focused versions of the “Getting Started: FAQ” and “People Like You” tools
GB Marketing to implement the Marketing Plan for driving users to the new tools, once the enrollment site has been improved, based on the Ideation Workshop findings including the Optional Benefits landing page within the GB secure site and select email campaigns
Optional Benefits team to continue to build out the purchase flow experience and make sure we have a clear CTA driving users from “Pricing” to “Purchase”
Post Launch
Virtual ideation board
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Results
Established foundational data tracking and analytics to start capturing user engagement, behaviors, and feedback for future iterations and features
Increased customer awareness and understanding of Optional Life and Critical Illness insurance
Created assets that can be leveraged and repurposed across the organization bringing efficiency to the business
Connected teams who had not worked together before to demonstrate cross-team collaboration and new ways of working focused on the customer
Found several opportunities for future initiatives and collaboration
Business Impact
Lift in NPS
Minimize the abandonment rate within the sales flow for near customers
Decrease bounce rate from the main Optional Benefits landing page
Increase website traffic to other parts of the business
Increase engagement on the Optional Benefits website pages by 20%
Anticipated Business Impact
Thorough documentation and organization allowed us to quickly start this project up after a one-year pause
By leveraging business relationships, we found resources we were told weren’t available allowing us to deliver digital experiences
Success Factors
Sponsor alignment is key to ensure we are seeking solutions that align not only with the business but also with innovation
It is important to make sure all executive leadership understands the constraints and risks from the very start to set expectations beyond the business unit