Direct Line Group : Account Mismatch Solution

What is an Account Mismatch?

An account mismatch occurs when customers are unable to complete purchase due to discrepancies in their account details, which impacts sales.

When purchasing a policy via the website, Price Comparison Websites, or the Contact Centre, all customers have a digital account created.

While this process works smoothly for most, around 7% of direct customers and 3 to 4% of PCW customers experience mismatch errors that prevent them from completing their purchase.

These errors occur when the personal details provided during the quote—such as surname or date of birth—do not match those on an existing DLG account.

Contextual research

One of the earliest stages of research involved taking a look at what others are doing with their account spaces. During this stage we do not limit ourselves to only other insurance companies, we look at a range of popular services including music  and streaming platforms.

Concepts and Testing:

22 remote tests were conducted with over 220 participants. 

In order to understand how our customers might interact with designs, we did several tests using Lyssna – a protyping and testing software that generates fast results using real people.

In the example here we ask participants to remove a profile that they no longer wish to see in their account. This test did not generate the results we had hoped, but by changing the copy in the ‘transfer’ button, we saw much better results. A strong example of why testing is important. 

Later tests become more complex. We used fully fleshed out prototypes in order to give a more accurate representation of behaviour with the final solution.

Solution

Our solution is simple: instead of preventing customers with a mismatched account from purchasing a product, we ask them if they would like to stitch their new account to the existing one. This greatly reduces friction in the purchase journey while enabling customers to make changes to their shared account later.

This solution is aimed at families and friends who may have attempted to purchase a product using a shared email address.

Early success

‘The Mismatch error is flatlining, there’s a 5%pts improvement for Click to Sale and we’re hearing positive feedback from operational colleagues that we’re hearing less calls/noise, with no signs of negative feedback or complaints from customers.’

Here we can see that just 2 days after the April 5th release, the percentage of people experiencing mismatch account difficulties is no longer dropping, and has flatlined. This is a massive win for all those involved.

Becuase this is a new solution, there is an importance on keeping an eye on the data from this point onwards. The data will be used to make further changes to the design as per the behaviour we see from customers.