Navigating Your Policy Application: From Submission to Evaluation
What actually happens after a customer submits an online application;
Providing clarity to users every step of the way.
Role
UX Designer
Timeline
11 months
Sep 23' - Aug 24'
Contributions
Guerrilla Testing, Stakeholder workshops, User Flows, System Flows, Design QA
Background
In 2023, we identified a significant opportunity when digital policy purchases surged across our platform. Despite this growth, customers lacked visibility into their application status—a critical touchpoint in their journey. It became clearer that we had to transform the customer experience by integrating seamless application tracking capabilities into our portal, empowering users with the transparency they demanded.
Problem
Customer analytics revealed a critical navigation pain point: users consistently failed to locate their recently applied or purchased policies within our digital platform. This visibility gap directly impacted both customer satisfaction and operational efficiency, as frustrated users resorted to calling our Singlife Hotline only to discover their policies were still being processed. The disconnect between expected digital transparency and actual user experience created unnecessary friction at a pivotal moment in the customer journey.
Lacking notification for policy updates
Between application submission and policy activation, customers do not receive any digital status updates, leaving them uninformed until a financial adviser or service staff makes contact.
Unaware of the next steps of their application
Users are uncertain about next steps after submitting applications, unsure whether to wait for a response or take additional actions.
Research
Based on stakeholder interviews, I've identified several opportunity areas to enhance the customer's online-to-offline experience.
No news is good news mentality
Our practice of prioritising application processing and only contacting customers when additional information is needed, creates a significant communication gap.
No way for users to track application status
Without status updates, customers grow anxious, especially those who have submitted applications and paid fees but received no confirmation about their policy status.
Design Vision
Some of our key design considerations for user status notifications includes the following
Ensure users are well-informed of their application statuses and next steps
Introduce colour coding into statuses to help users identify actions required from them
Use of more precise language, removing jargon and phrasing with a clearer narrative flow
Solution
Resolving this issue required extensive collaboration across multiple business units to map the application process and understand each team's operational workflow.
Research Methodologies:
User Flows
System Flows
Stakeholder Interviews
Click on images below to get a clearer view and explainer on the design decisions.
Design Solution 1
Understanding how the system passes information
With better understanding of how information is being passed, I could design a clearer status update on the consumer front.
I identified and broke down statuses into 3 key states:
✍🏻 More action required by the users
✅ Successful applications
👎🏻 Unsuccessful applications and scenarios
Thereafter, I tallied the statuses with our advisory platforms sales process and claims process to see if we could utilise any of the status naming and colour coding.
Design Solution 2
Accessibility to track policies
Users strongly emphasised the importance of easy access to the status tracker. I implemented a button in the quick access panel, which received highly positive feedback during guerrilla testing.
Design Solution 3
Helping users understand their application
While we had defined the key statuses, we still needed to decide what information to show users and how to present it clearly.
To get it right, we spent weeks refining the design with design critiques, running guerrilla tests, and iterating multiple times before landing on the final version.
Design Solution 4
Providing transparency to gain trust
I chose to display potential statuses upfront on a tooltip to provide transparency and build trust with the users.
Retrospective
This status tracker started of with a simple concept to provide information to users to find out more about their application, but evolved into something more.
Understanding systems flow is extremely important
Status updates sounds simple but there is a lot of work going on in the background. Understanding the work of the business units, systems and tools is very important.
Striking a balance as a UX Designer
Being a UX designer does not mean ignoring business processes and goals. We should prioritise understanding the business and constraints before aligning with users.
Design is intentional, and the small details matters
While designing this feature, I learnt that minute things that are overlooked — status updates to users, how its displayed and structured, is extremely valuable to users.
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