Defining A New Insurance Product For SMEs Through User Research

Rissier Del Giudice

Service Designer

User Researcher

Business Strategist

Figma

Google Sheets

Miro

🏁 The challenge

A large global insurance company wanted to explore new ways to provide value to SMEs – Small and Medium-sized food businesses (such as restaurants and bakeries) considering the low client rates in this sector, compared to other business sectors already well covered by the company.

How might a new insurance product be tailored to deliver real value to SMEs – Small and medium-sized food businesses?

To answer this question, the team set up a 10-week action plan to investigate, frame problems, and co-create ideas with stakeholders to address those framed problems.

🧠 My role

As a member of the research team, I supported the conception of the research plan and its execution. My responsibilities included recruiting and conducting interviews with users and stakeholders, analyzing interview data, facilitating co-creation workshops, and regularly reporting research findings to stakeholders.

⚙️ Design Approach

The project was designed to be concluded in 10-weeks, during those weeks, the team was in charge of executing the project in 3 main parts:

1- Empathizing

+15

Interviews with restaurant owners/ managers

+10

Interviews with insurance agents

+8h

Hours of client shadowing in restaurants.

2- Framing the right problem

By analyzing the data gathered from the empathizing process, the team was able to frame many problems and opportunities to be addressed in the later stages of the project.

The core insight is the difference in how clients perceive value in an insurance product compared to how the insurance company views delivering value to SMEs.

The main research findings:

🚨 Client expectations

Clients would perceive more value in an insurance product for SMEs by receiving support for everyday issues to keep their business running, by receiving a professional for fixing a broken fridge or by easily getting a plumber or an electrician provided by the insurance.

💊 What insurance companies expected to deliver

Insurance companies see value in provide support for major issues or catastrophes to protect assets. Examples include wildfires, floods, or explosions.

Fostering empathy to user pain points through User Personas

By analyzing specific client characteristics and behaviors gathered from user interviews, the team developed five distinct User Personas. These User Personas became a valuable tool for enhancing communication with stakeholders, fostering empathy by providing a clear understanding of the client’s goals and needs.

The process of defining the User Personas was grounded in identifying and clustering similar behaviors observed in the user interviews. Through this clustering of insights, the team was able to define key user behaviors related to insurance. This led to the creation of a matrix of extreme behaviors, where each axis represented a behavioral spectrum with opposing extremes, allowing the team to better capture the diverse range of client interactions with insurance products.

The User Personas

The Partner

This user persona is deeply involved in the day-to-day operations of the business. While actively managing operational tasks, she delegates the decision-making process for insurance procurement to her business partner.

The Enjoyer

This user persona has insurance for her business and frequently uses all of its benefits. However, she is never satisfied with the coverage provided by the insurance company.

The Determined

This user persona is enthusiastic about insurance, actively seeking the best solutions for her business and using insurance whenever necessary.

The Indifferent

This user persona is so busy running their business that she doesn’t have time to think about insurance. Even if she has a policy, she tends to forget it’s there.

The self-sufficient

This user persona believes that insurance doesn’t meet his needs. Instead, he prefers to protect himself by building a network of professionals he can rely on to handle any unexpected events

We established two key behavioral dimensions, which enabled the team to position each persona within the matrix according to their specific goals and needs.

Horizontal: Does not understand business insurance VS Understand a lot about business insurance.

Vertical: Very willing to get SME insurance VS not willing to get SME insurance.

3- Co-creating with stakeholders

During the project, the team conducted a two-day workshop involving stakeholders from various departments. The goal was to co-create and prioritize ideas based on the problems identified in the previous stage of the project. The ideas were categorized into four main parameters: Quick Wins, Must Haves, Should Haves, and Would Haves.

After classifying the ideas, the participants were invited to select some of the Quick Win and Must Have ideas. They were then asked to provide more detailed insights on how to implement and foster these ideas, leveraging their understanding of the company’s internal processes.

✅ Results

According to the previous stages, the team was capable of delivering:

Strategy for launching

The strategy for launching a new insurance product targeted at the SME market includes key drivers for marketing and distribution channels. This strategy is based on evidence gathered from real users and insurance agents.

A User Journey with a list of Quick-wins and Long-term ideas

A list of +40 ideas based on pain points and opportunities to enhance current products or increase the new product. The list was classified into 4 main parameters: Quick Wins (feasible in the short term), Must Haves, Should Haves, and Would Haves, according to the moment of the user journey and user personas.

📜 Conclusions and Learnings

User Personas for Databases

User Personas become even more useful when they define the measurable characteristics and behaviours to be identified in databases.

Show, don’t tell

The power of visual thinking by writing down anywhere possible (whiteboards, post-its, papers on walls, windows) to foster communication and make agreements between the team members during internal conversations to establish the strategy and analyze data.

Report to engage stakeholders

Regularly providing information keeps stakeholders secure, calm, and more engaged with the project, its processes, and activities.

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Posted Dec 28, 2024

Developed a user-centered insurance product tailored for SME food businesses, leveraging service design to address user needs and deliver innovative solutions.

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