Making it easier to get help with your health insurance
Company
Premera Blue Cross is the largest health insurance company in the Pacific Northwest.
My role
I led the design and supported the research.
Team
Product Manager, Researcher, Analyst, Engineers
Dates
June 2019 - Jan 2020
The problem
Like most health insurance companies, it's difficult for Premera to earn customers' trust and satisfaction.
To find opportunities to improve, we routinely send feedback surveys to our customers. From these surveys, we discovered that 35% of people were frustrated when calling customer service.
My team was tasked with understanding what was causing this problem, and designing a solution.
Solution overview
Reduced time to connect to customer service by about 70% and improved satisfaction by 11% by designing a chatbot that authenticated callers and transferred them to the right customer service team.
Researching the problem
Research goals
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Map out the existing user journey
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Understand user pain points
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Understand business and technical constraints
Methods
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Listened to customer service calls and read feedback surveys
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Interviewed callers, customer service reps, and internal stakeholders.
Existing user journey
Our research helped us understand all the steps a user had to take to get connected to customer service.
User pain points
It took callers about 3 minutes to go through our automated phone system, due to a strict verification process.
After finally getting connected to a representative, callers are often transferred to another person.
Calling insurance companies is a stressful experience. Calls range from people worried they couldn't afford surgery, to people frustrated that their insurance had denied coverage for a medical service.
Customer service reps typically spent the first few minutes understanding and researching the caller's problem before being able to help.
Understanding constraints
Before jumping into solutions, I talked with my teammates to understand technical and business constraints.
The business wanted us to shorten and prevent calls because each call cost about $12.
Our engineering team lacked resources, so the design had to be simple to develop.
Redesigning the automated phone system would be too expensive.
Ideation
Brainstorming as a team
We presented the research findings to the team and brainstormed ways to solve the problem.
Using the team's diverse expertise (engineering, business, data, etc.) to generate ideas
Deciding what to build
When deciding what concepts we wanted to design and test, the main factors were the business and technical constraints.
After analyzing various potential solutions, the team agreed to explore the idea of utilizing our existing mobile app to verify callers and allow them to skip the automated phone system.
Engineering cost vs. business goal
Testing & Iterating
Concept testing - chat vs. form
Two of the concepts that stood out were designing a chatbot or a form to replace the phone system. We decided to test both of these to understand their pros and cons.
7/10 participants preferred the form design, but the team decided to build the chatbot because it better supported our business goal of reducing calls, while still solving the core user problem.
A chatbot felt more informal, and users expected to get help without calling.
A form felt more professional and was perceived as more efficient.
Defining the user flow
I designed multiple chatbot flows, varying in complexity and types of questions asked. In the end, it was about keeping the experience quick and simple for the user.
Usability testing - refining the design
After converting the user flow to a prototype, I then conducted usability tests to further refine the design. Here are a few of my key findings:
Finding: Reduce the need for typing
Help the user quickly answer the bot's question by clicking on buttons or using their voice instead of typing out responses.
Finding: Keep it short
Users tended to only scan content and often missed information if the message was too long.
Finding: Present the bot's top 3 guesses
When clarifying the user's question, the bot should display its top 3 guesses along with a "Something else" option, so that the user is not trapped.
Finding: Fail gracefully
If the chatbot is unable to understand the user's question the first time, don't try again, just get them to a human.
High fidelity designs
Results
We successfully released this feature on both our Android and iOS apps.
Reduced time to connect to customer service by about 70%
Improved customer satisfaction by 11%
86% of customer service reps found the product helpful
The new design eliminated the major pain points when calling customer service
I had the chance to present this project at a conference hosted by Premera
Reflection
Involving the engineers throughout the design process was critical in understanding technical constraints as well as promoting a culture of collaboration. This also helped reduce implementation time since they could start developing while I was still designing.
One of the biggest challenges with this project was balancing what was possible today with an ideal future state. However, the team is committed to continuously improving the chatbot's functionality so that it can answer more questions and help users without them ever needing to call.
"I think this is an excellent step taken by Premera to help get me off the phone faster" - App user