Tag Archives: self-service

How to improve all your business metrics through digital best practices

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This article is a summary of the keynote presentation I gave at the Nimbus 90 Ignite event in London on Monday.

Modern businesses need to become more engaging, responsive and efficient. To achieve this, they need to focus on stronger digital deliverables, agile processes and automate much more than they do today.

Many businesses still struggle to define what digital really means, so we have come up with 12 “best practices” which include:

  1. Business Focussed Solutions (not technical)
  2. Self-service (for everyone)
  3. Try stuff (Fail fast/ learn quickly)
  4. (Very) regular releases
  5. Easy to use and regular multi variate testing
  6. Value dashboards
  7. Easier integration (e.g. APIs)
  8. Multi-device
  9. New business models (e.g. marketplace, sharing economy…)
  10. Culture of Innovation
  11. Bots/ automation
  12. Two way conversations

When we start a workshop with a customer, we focus on each of these digital best practices. We then challenge existing processes or applications. For example, we might ask the sales team how customers can self-service themselves, or how many customers are frustrated that they can’t use a specific app on a mobile or tablet device. Continue reading How to improve all your business metrics through digital best practices →

Five trends from The Future of General Insurance event

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Describing key insurance trends at The Future of General Insurance event
Describing key insurance trends at The Future of General Insurance event

This week I spoke at The Future of General Insurance event about our latest Insurance Industry Technology Trends report at Endava. Here’s a brief summary of the presentation.

Endava works in many industries, and we can see what companies outside of insurance do really well, that insurers can learn from. We have found 20 ‘trends’, of which we covered five most relevant ones to general insurers at the conference:

  • IoT (Internet of Things) are slowly redefining how consumers perceive ‘insurance’
  • Moving to mobile first interfaces
  • Using social media
  • The use of digital marketing in the insurance industry
  • Building self-service into systems

Continue reading Five trends from The Future of General Insurance event →

Designing Self-Service From the Start

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PremierInn Check In email - a good example of customer self-service
Premier Inn Check In email – a good example of customer self-service

One of the features of “a digital project”, is that the end user can become self-sufficient without needing to call the organisation offering the service or product. We call this self-service.

The first Internet services had a thin veil of self-service features, enabling companies to experience the cost savings of letting users perform common tasks.

Once this Return On Investment was proven, one of two things happened. Many organisations left the systems alone, stopped any further investment and patted themselves on the back.

Other companies redesigned the service to allow the maximum possible self-service touch points to maximise the future return on investment. They redesigned the self-service experience from the start. Continue reading Designing Self-Service From the Start →

Review of 2015 predictions

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Time to look back on the 2015 predictions from 12 months ago…. how many of those crystal ball predictions came true?

1. Self-service: Next generation self-service offerings

When was the last time you telephoned a call centre? I can’t remember.

According to a report from Dimension Data, “Social media is already the first choice for Gen Y (globally).” Continue reading Review of 2015 predictions →

Digital Media predictions in 2015

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Each year I forecast some predictions in the Digital Media/ Internet world, and at the end of the year I score those predictions to see whether they came true or not.

1. Self-service: Next generation self-service offerings

Expect to see more companies offering portals for customers to service themselves.

For instance, think of the last time you bought an airline ticket – you probably bought the ticket through a website and checked in online or through your smartphone.

This will become more commonplace. I can’t remember the last time I put coins in a parking meter – I use my smartphone to pay for parking instead.

Through 2014 we’ll see coins used less, and you’ll be calling help desks less because you’ll be buying and servicing your needs online instead. Continue reading Digital Media predictions in 2015 →