What happens when you forget to put the customer at the heart of your business processes?

This weekend I got a call from a friend; we were chatting away about various things when they suddenly said,

"...and I cannot believe this; I woke up this morning and had a message to say my car insurance was cancelled!"

"What? Why?"

"Because Flow [the insurer] tried to take a payment from my card, I had it replaced, so the payment failed, (twice, apparently!) I had no inkling of this, but they allegedly notified me twice, and then cancelled! Weirdly I got that message! AND to make matters worse, I have no means of reinstating my insurance online...I really need my car this weekend...I'm in a real bind.”

“Can you call someone?”

“Nope, I called a lovely person at LV [flow is part of LV], but she doesn’t work for Flow; she tried to help, but her only advice was to email them, and there’s no guarantee they will respond, and I need to get my car insured asap.”

“Now hang on just a minute here…that can’t be right surely?”  I needed to understand more…

I discovered that Liverpool Victoria had noticed a gap in the market. They created a fully digital insurance service that allows customers to self-serve. It’s great because it keeps costs down and allows you to manage your insurance online. The process is actually quite good. Until it's not.

Like other companies such as Amazon and Netflix, your payment is linked to your card. So if you need to replace your card, your payment WILL fail (unless you update all your accounts that use this process, or respond to the notification that your payment didn’t go through). This is not particularly convenient for the customer, and the big difference is we can all cope without our favourite programmes for a while, but car insurance? Absolutely not.

Let's look at that process for the customer in more detail:

Looks ok…doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, there are some key risks and considerations missing from this process:

1.     The payment collection process for a high-risk transaction (such as keeping your car insured) is not sufficiently robust. If you replace your card, then it’s your problem if you don’t identify all your subscriptions that use this process and update them. So why not eliminate that issue with a Direct Debit agreement? Or if that is too costly, include one alternative communication method?

2.     The customer is not at the heart of this process; you pay, and if it fails, you will get a couple of messages using one medium that is not full-proof, and if you miss those messages, that's on you.

3.     When they cancel, there is no way to reinstate your insurance online, and you can’t call to do that either. Sorry, but you are on your own…

What about the risks associated with creating a process that’s cheap to run but fails to include a solid customer care component?

1.     Finder.com reported that in 2019, 97 million debit cards were in circulation, and Nationwide did a survey of 2000 people and reported on average, four in 10 people lose their cards alongside other household items such as keys, glasses and mobile phones. Seven million cards were reported lost or stolen in 2018, resulting in replacements, so why then would you rely on taking payments for something so important using this method?

2.     When designing this “self serve digital only” product, did anyone assess the risks and issues if those payment processes failed? If they did, was it simply a case that everyone around the table agreed to tolerate those risks in return for a large customer base?

I don’t know the answer to this question, but when creating a new product, I often ask design teams to consider who their demographic is, and then consider someone close to them that fits that demographic. It could be their partner, mother, father, or child, and ask if they needed this product or service, would it work for them?

This product wouldn’t work for my mum, as she is not tech-savvy, but my sister would definitely benefit from cheaper car insurance. Would I recommend this product to her? Absolutely not. As a mum, she’s highly likely to miss emails (and lose her card) and spends most of her time driving my precious 10-year-old niece to swimming classes, brownies and gymnastics…

For that reason, I would urge Flow to review their product offering with the customer in mind; before someone ends up in trouble with the law, or, worse still, hurt in an accident with an uninsured driver that missed a couple of emails.