Case Study: National Life Group
Redefining the customer for a century old business.
For the first time in their 100 year history, we helped National Life Group talk to the people who own their products.
- Role
- Head of Design, North America - Cognizant / Insight, Strategy & Design
- The problem
- The company had always defined the broker/“seller” as their customer, but the life insurance and annuities industry was facing a radical disruption of selling directly to customers. The business had no understanding of the “buyer” of their products.
- The solution
- Working with NLG leadership, I led a team to conduct the first primary research of their “buyer” customer and created a comprehensive Customer Experience Strategy that created an understanding of their customers, the lifecycle of use over time, and a prioritized plan based on key users and opportunities.
Primary research.
We did a combination of quantitative and qualitative research, performing one-on-one interviews with 15+ people in their homes and 300+ via survey.
Customer profile / personas
Based on the primary research we created a series of customer profiles and a prioritization of key customers the business wanted to focus on.
Customer lifecycle
We mapped out a ‘current state’ lifecycle for each customer profile from purchasing a policy through lifetime of use.
Co-creating a vision.
We collaborated with the heads of business to identify the key opportunites and outcomes in order to create a long-term view for how the business could shift.
Defining the future.
From our work sessions, we created customer lifecycles for the future identifying key moments throughout a customer’s journey over a lifetime.
Results
- The first primary research resulting in customer profiles and lifecycles to plan their new business.
- Alignment from the business on a common vision through collaboration and co-creation.
- A Customer Experience strategy to act as a north star to guide the implementation of a direct-to-consumer model.
- An actionable plan including the first step of creating a new Customer service portal.