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The CHALLENGE
MetLife's insurance agents in Mexico are a decentralized group, going from office to hospital to school. They bring forms for their customers, remind them of a past conversation to pick back up on potential product upgrades, and try and connect the dots between a customer's situation in a 5 minute conversation as the customer goes about their busy day.
Key work done
Designed & facilitated 2-day dual-language workshop
Field diary documentation & share out
Storyboarded early prototypes
Managed low-fidelity prototype & testing, mid-fidelity prototype iterations
THE OUTCOME
As lead design strategist, my team gathered the New York corporate strategists alongside Mexico office’s operations, field coordination, marketing teams alongside agents to develop ideas to improve how agents engage with their clients. The prototyped tool was implemented across a de-centralized network of agents and set the stage for the shift to tablet use.
doing the work
Building empathy:
Our work starts with understanding how agents meet and engage with their customers.
The Mexico office had a long-standing practice to encourage visiting employees from other offices to shadow agents as they went on their routes. This took team members out to schools, police academies, hospitals, and government offices.
This created an opportunity for lived empathy building ahead of a two-day workshop.
Bringing this empathy into focus alongside business & operational priorities
Teams from Mexico’s office in sales, product, and operations came together alongside team members from New York’s marketing team to work on developing ways agents can more easily connect with their customers.
Workshops can easily become multi-day fatiguing cycles of brainstorming, in which participants don’t feel like the ideas generated are ultimately useful. With the support of Co-Collective, we delivered the workshop with key elements that mitigated these risks:
Incorporated prior research to set a strategic focus for the sessions: We organized participants into tables, each table worked on a focus the business had already prioritized
Made the experience of the agent equal in weight to the knowledge the business brings: Workshop activities connected the dots between each table’s business focus and the moments they experienced out in the field, as well as inviting agents to join key portions
Ensured all could participate fully: Facilitation happened in both English and Spanish; we had professional translators working to help everyone express themselves authentically and comfortably
Making it real:
I supported developing one of the resulting ideas, leading our brand team out of their comfort zone to prototype low-fidelity physical tools. Agents have limited time to reconnect with clients as they do their rounds visiting offices, hospitals and schools - coupled with a perception of complexity, it can be hard to make product features feel relevant.
We developed an analog interactive tool with which clients selected their personal priorities (who they want to protect, what they are saving towards), to then reveal a customized “shortlist” of product features to consider. Testing it in the field with enthusiastic agents in Mexico helped refine the key form factors, prioritizing ease of use in unpredictable locations.
If a client is unsure, they can take the card back home, discuss with family members, and over time an agent can return to this short list for renewed nudges to consider.
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