Post-Purchase-Experience

Elevating the Post-Purchase Experience

15 Min Read
Sep 30, 2021

How the Asia team leveraged the Global Design System to define a vision, test new features, and lay the foundation for remarkable post-purchase experiences across products regionally. 

The Challenge

MetLife customers across Asia have come to expect more from the products and services they use now that top-notch digital experiences have become a part of their daily lives. The Asia team set out to understand these changing expectations and unmet needs so we could better deliver for our customers in Asia, starting with Japan and South Korea.

CUSTOMER VALUE PROPOSITION

Engaging customers through a meaningful, personalised experience that enables them to understand our products and utilize our services, so that they feel confident about their future.

Opportunity and Approach

Our goal was to leapfrog the competition with new, best-in-class digital features and a strong offline-to-online connection. To do it, we leaned on the MetLife Global Design System—and built on it—to help us transform the post-purchase experience in a way that could be applied across markets.

Finding ‘Uniquely MetLife’ Experience Opportunities

To start, we measured our existing post-purchase experiences against MetLife’s Customer Experience Principles—standards in the design system that shape how we build remarkable and enduring relationships with our customers. This helped us evaluate where we were and identify where we needed to improve.

From there, we created a customer journey map, identifying 20 touchpoints for potential new features. These touchpoints ranged from claim and payments, to policy coverage, and the agent relationship, and we worked with local MetLife teams to validate them and group each one within a corresponding design principle.

We used this journey map to inform a brainstorm that led to 43 different concepts for bringing value to the customer. Measuring impact vs. complexity, we considered different scenarios and selected eight concepts that would provide a more engaging post-purchase experience. These eight concepts proceeded to the design phase, while the remaining concepts were placed in a backlog for future iteration.

Insurance products are so complicated. I want my insurance company to provide only the necessary information.
MetLife Customer, Japan interviews
Visual showing concepts under the MetLife Experience Principles
As you can see from the graphic above, we identified policy coverage, for example, as a concept area ripe for improvement through the lens of our experience principle of “Be transparent with me.” With that principle as our guide, we set out to design a clear and concise policy information experience that would show customers exactly what they are, and are not, covered for. We would use human language, remove all legalese and incorporate product tiers, clear hierarchy, iconography, and infographics to keep things as transparent as possible.
Our goal is to create a profound experience that utilizes MetLife’s strengths and heritage.
Asia regional stakeholder

Accelerating Design

In the design phase, we drew from the global design system as we looked to create visual and UX design flows for each of our concepts. Our tried-and-true UX standards were a great jumping off point, and exploring elements like page hierarchy allowed us to amplify the brand throughout the post-purchase experience in a way that could also be customizable at the local level.

Despite differences in products, we were able to unify common user flows, like dashboard, onboarding, policy coverage, notifications, digital surrender, holistic life planner, chatbot, and digital agent. And user testing with 20 customers across Japan and Korea generated insights that helped us refine our designs.

While leveraging MetLife standard user interface elements and existing components, we also found some areas where the design system could flex for certain functionality—like unique onboarding flows for main and sub products, for example. We worked closely with the global team to design and introduce these new components to the global design system, so future teams could incorporate them in their work.

Scaling Solutions for Common Needs

In the end, our approach amounted to the creation of design assets that can now be used across common user flows in work across the globe. These assets are already being used to jumpstart work on projects in the region, and have found their way into existing apps like 360Health. .

Having visual and UX design that has been tested with customers and integrated in our post purchase experiences helps drive NPS uplift through higher engagement and greater customer satisfaction. With a set of plug-and-play design assets that can be used in common user flows, we’re able to reduce our operating costs while paving the way for our customers to better serve themselves. All of this delivers on the goal to leapfrog the competition with a new, best-in-class customer experience.