To fulfil their vision of becoming a leader in the creation and protection of their customers’ financial well-being, a large South African insurance business realised they needed to provide their field-based sales agents with a comprehensive real-time view of customers while out of the office, to enable them to service the needs of these customers more effectively.

A previous attempt by the client to support their sales agents through a mobile app resulted in very low levels of take-up and utilisation, leading to poor customer experiences. The client asked BSG to assist them in understanding why the previous attempt had not worked and design a more effective solution. To ensure customer centricity of the vision and design, BSG advised an approach inclusive of user experience (UX) requirements and solution ideas. An Agile methodology (a first for the client) was therefore suggested to deliver incremental capability to users, through clearly defined sprints. All of which was underpinned by a clear delivery plan allowing for rapid pivoting, due to fast user feedback occasionally resulting in changing requirements.

• Increased customer acquisition and retention by providing better advice and service, based on real-time access to customer information
• Improved productivity, as previously the advisors would have to commute between customers and branches to open a policy or for outstanding requirements, with the app they can view all required customer information on their mobile device
• Higher customer satisfaction through faster application processing and responses
• Reduced turn-around times enabling faster answers on agent queries
• Improved control and compliance through a BSG-introduced security check to ensure advisors only have access to their client’s relevant information
• Fewer lost deals by securing payments more quickly

Introducing an Agile delivery framework, incorporating user and customer experience principles and a data-driven change approach ensured the client could adapt much quicker to changing market conditions and customer needs. This enabled fact-based decisions to be made about the best way to increase the uptake of the application by sales agents.

A senior client stakeholder was delighted by BSG’s customer-centric and fact-based approach, advising this would be his benchmark for change going forward. Additionally, the client believed that while this project was one of their more challenging ones, it was concluded very successfully and smoothly by BSG.