Role
UX Designer, Project Manager, Developer Advocate, User Trainer
Project
Partway through my internship at GuideOne Insurance, the department director called me in to work on a technology project. He told me, “We want to implement a live chat service with our new web portal, GO BOP. You’re in charge – figure out what we need.”
In two weeks, I came back with a plan for integrating the chat with our site and setting up an internal support team. Senior leadership approved the project, and I worked with information architects and developers to set up the backend and test the service. I collaborated with the business team to organize a support team and designed the chat interface to match company branding.
Partway through the project, we discovered that our chosen service didn’t work with Internet Explorer. My team and I moved quickly to pivot to another service and even found a lower price, saving money for the company.
The project stayed on-schedule, and I presented it to the CIO a few weeks later for approval. I also trained the internal support team on the interface, and the chat service went live on the website soon after.
…In further pursuit of ease-of-doing-business, GuideOne has implemented and is currently piloting live chat, Beving relates. “This allows our agents to receive live assistance for their questions about the product, underwriting, and the GO BOP portal navigation,” he explains. “Once the pilot concludes, we plan to release this functionality to all portal users. In addition, we are actively reviewing all questions and answers so that we can build chat bot functionality to answer commonly asked questions instantaneously.”
– Insurance Innovation Reporter
The best part of this project was creating a great user experience! The chat app launched with a redesigned agent portal, and the support team received over 100 messages from users on the first day alone. It allowed users to directly reach out with subject-matter questions, website support issues, and feedback on the new portal. This feedback channel was valuable both for external and internal users, and good UX helped everyone transition easily to the new portal.
