Reflection - Storytelling

Challenge

I’m working for a multinational insurance company in Indonesia. The challenge for insurance industry  here is bad paradigm from the public that all insurance company basically are cheater. Most people  think that insurance company is only profit-oriented rather than providing protection for them.

For years, the selling approach is always creating new products based on the market trend rather than  understanding what is actually needed by the customer. The salesperson always tries to sell product  which will give them the most sales commission rather than suggest the right product to the customer.

Now, we want to change it. We focus to become more customer-centric and apply design thinking in  order to achieve that objective.

Selection

We use multiple design thinking tools for this initiative, but what we mostly use is the Storytelling  method. We believe that using this method can help us to get the actual requirement from the  customer by asking opening questions to them and use active listening method to encourage the  customer to tell us everything they want / need / like and also everything they don’t.

Application

First step, we hire a market research consultant. They analyze our customer data and using quantitative  and qualitative method to providing us the customer segmentation.

Second step, we decide high-prioritized segments which we will follow up with deep dive qualitative  research to understand the actual requirement for each segment. The prioritization is not only based on  based on the potential insurance market but also for segment who is not interested to insurance at all.  However, we also have noble mission to change bad paradigm in public about insurance.

Third step, we take 5 – 10 random sampling from each prioritized-segment. We held multiple focus  group discussion (FGD) and a lot of private interviews. We throw open questions and let each customer  tell their own stories. We let them tell us what feature from an insurance product which they need and  which they don’t. We also ask them how they want to be served, how they want to be explained about  the product, how they want to know about their claim status, etc. We received a lot of criticism during  these sessions, but we were happy to get it since we know it will make us better to serve them.

Fourth step, we compile all of the customer inputs and put it in a mind mapping diagram. After that, we  continue with generating ideas, generating alternative solutions, and prototyping. In summary, we  categorized our solutions into 2 big categories: product solutions and customer journey solutions.

Fifth step, we present the prototype to the customer and ask for their feedback. We want to know if the  new product can accommodate their requirement. We want to know if our new customer journey  approach will improve the customer engagement to us. We conduct this activity repetitively until most  of the respondent customer are happy with our solutions.

Sixth step, we apply the solution to our whole company. Honestly, it’s not easy. Especially with the sales  team, since we change our selling approach from product-based selling to needs-based selling. In the  end, we change the sales commission system based on customer based on number of satisfied  customers rather than number of revenues. Finally, everybody happy and willing to take the new  approach to server the customer better.

Seven step, we apply this to the market and measure how the customer response. Fortunately, we get  positive feedback and we can count this initiative as success story. After that, we continuously do this  activity as part of our continuous improvement to serve the customer better.

Insight

By applying Storytelling techniques, we can dig what’s actually the customer think. We empathize to the  customer’s thought, active listening to the customer problem, and open to criticism. Storytelling really  give us a new insight rather than the traditional approach who usually rely on data in decision making  rather than responding to disruptive environment.

Approach

Nowadays, we use Storytelling in a lot of thing in our company, not only for the external customer but  also for our internal customer. Verbal communication is encouraged rather than written communication  only, and we also actively listen to other rather than make decision based on assumption.

