A smooth experience: Bank and insurance for the young

The new service package, combining bank and insurance products, has been an extremely successful innovation among young people.

For most young people, a bank account and a credit card are necessary items, while the need for insurance is overlooked. As many as 73% of the 18-24 age group say they have little or no insight into insurance offers and prices. As a result, this group is greatly under-insured.
An idea development phase was started by Gjensidige, together with the service design agency Livework, to investigate the potential for a concept that combined banking and insurance oriented towards people in the 20-30 age group. Through conversations with this age group it was found that most realised that they should be insured, but thought that both the product and process were too complicated and difficult to understand. It was therefore clear that to succeed in reaching this age group, the service concept must be simple and tailored to their needs. Because Gjensidiges insurance and banking services were two separate business units with different sales processes and customer procedures, this was a big challenge. How should an intuitive, streamlined and complete ordering concept and customer experience be designed? Two departments, one experience In partnership with Gjensidige, Livework carried out a basic mapping of all back-office processes for both the insurance part and the banking part. Who sends what data where? Who printed the credit cards and who sent them to the customer? Who issued the policies and how were they registered and sent on to the customer? If a streamlined customer experience was to be developed it was important that all internal functions worked together and were coordinated. The blueprint of a smooth experience The development of a Service Blueprint gave the project a clear direction, and the process was accelerated. The new customer experience which was driven by goals such as transparency, clarity and simplicity was described so that new goals for internal processes, interdisciplinary collaboration and routines could be identified. The entire customer journey was thus visualised, and all the customers points of contact with Gjensidige and the new service were defined along a chain of activities from start to finish. In this way the new service concept was defined, and all operative consequences described. Service Blueprint was thus a work description for which procedures and technologies must be in place to ensure that the specified customer experience would actually be realised. (The opposite happens all too often existing procedures and technologies become the guiding force for the customer experience one receives.) Gjensidige used the developed Service Blueprint as the foundation for adapting the new service concept to web use. Gjensidiges customers can now for the first time receive a bank account, credit card and insurance package all with just a few mouse clicks. Design- driven innovation has created a 30 % increase! The new service package, combining bank and insurance products, has been an extremely successful innovation among young people. After two weeks, Gjensidige sold more packages than it had in a year with its earlier set up. By using the Service Blueprint work tool, it has created an entirely new customer experience based on the customers needs. Since launch, Gjensidiges share of the younger customer base has increased by an impressive 30%.