Empowering Allstate Agents
.png)
Business Planning Platform
Project Overview:
Allstate’s success depends on its agents, who often struggle with profitability due to the complexity of determining what insurance products to sell and when. Many agents find it challenging to project the outcomes of business investments in areas like marketing and staffing, making it difficult to achieve sustained success.
The Challenge:
Agents face a complex compensation structure and over 300 finance reports, making it hard to prioritize which products to sell and when. This complexity has led to a heavy reliance on Field Sales Leaders (FSLs) for guidance in sales strategy planning, which is currently a manual and time-consuming process. The lack of advanced analytical tools further complicates agents’ ability to make data-driven decisions independently.
Goals:
- Empower Agents with a Strategic Tool: Develop an intuitive tool that enables agents to independently understand and plan their sales strategies, reducing their reliance on FSLs
- Enhance Profitability: Equip agents with the ability to accurately project the outcomes of business investments, improving their decision-making and success rates
- Automate Sales Planning: Streamline and automate the sales strategy process, allowing agents to plan more effectively without extensive FSL intervention
My Contributions:
- Strategic Leadership: Provided strategic leadership in UX throughout the design discovery phase, ensuring alignment with business objectives
- Team Leadership: Led interdisciplinary teams in the conceptualization and execution of the commercial auto claims experience
- Workshops: Facilitated design thinking workshops to foster creativity and innovation within the team
- Wireframe Development: Developed wireframes to translate strategic objectives into tangible design concepts
- Research: Conducted extensive research to inform strategic decisions, synthesizing findings into actionable insights
- Stakeholder Engagement: Engaged with Allstate's UX community and leadership to socialize and iterate on design concepts
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Worked closely with product management, engineering, and marketing teams to ensure cohesive implementation
- Feedback Integration: Integrated feedback from users, stakeholders, and team members to continuously refine the design
Our Agents
Understanding the Compensation Model:
Our primary users were Allstate Agents, supported by Field Sales Leaders (FSLs). Agents are independent business owners who exclusively sell Allstate products, managing everything from rent to payroll while aiming to meet sales targets. FSLs assist by guiding and planning with Agents to help them grow their businesses. Clear, accessible financial insights were crucial to support their success.
Additional Insights from Quick Survey (Sample size 20 Allstate Agents and 6 FSLs):
- Difficulty in Accessing Reports: 17 out of 20 Agents (85%) reported difficulty in locating and understanding their financial reports
- Time-Consuming Preparation: 4 out of 6 FSLs (67%) indicated that preparing for consultations with Agents required excessive time due to scattered data. In some cases a full working day
- Uncertainty in Meeting Sales Targets: 80% felt uncertain about their ability to meet sales targets due to unclear financial insights
- Use of Third-Party Services: 40% turned to third-party services for strategic planning because of challenges in accessing internal resources
- Outsourcing Financial Planning: 15% outsourced their financial planning to external consultants due to internal inefficiencies
Friction Points:
- Fragmented Reporting: The scattered nature of financial reports across multiple platforms led to significant inefficiencies, making it difficult for Agents to gather the insights needed to plan and achieve their goals.
- Time-Consuming Preparation: FSLs had to dedicate extensive time to prepare for agent consultations, complicating scheduling and reducing timely support.
- Reluctance to Invest: Agents were hesitant to invest in business growth, such as marketing or expanding their sales teams, due to the lack of clear ROI. This often drove them to seek external, paid planning services.
- Outsourcing Due to Inefficiencies: A significant number of Agents turned to external consultants for financial planning, highlighting the need for more streamlined and effective internal tools
Discovery
Guiding the User-Centric Exploration:
To understand the needs of Allstate Agents and Field Sales Leaders (FSLs), I applied various design thinking methodologies to uncover pain points, streamline workflows, and ensure a user-centric approach to financial reporting and strategic planning.
- Stakeholder Identification: Engaged key stakeholders, including Agents, FSLs, and representatives from Field Sales Operations, and Allstate's Data and behavioral Science SME's.
- User Journey: Created a comprehensive overview of the user flow
- Target Audience: Defined the target audience and their pain points
- Persona Development: Created detailed personas to represent different user types
- Use Cases: Analyzed both common and edge cases to ensure comprehensive solutions
Methods Used:
- Applied: Affinity Clustering, Sketching, Rose-Thorn-Bud, Round Robin, and Voting techniques.
Stakeholders Involved:
- Engaged with stakeholders: Collaborated with Product, Field Sales Operations, Marketing, and Business Strategy teams, while directly engaging Agents and FSLs as primary users. Legal and Compliance ensured regulatory adherence, while Data Science and Behavioral Science helped validate findings and drive data-informed decisions
Outcome:
- Main Functionality and Use Cases: Defined main functionality and use cases, including identification of edge cases to ensure comprehensive coverage
- Business Requirements: Established clear business requirements to guide development and implementation
- UX Vision and Direction: Clarified vision and direction for the product, ensuring alignment with stakeholder expectations
- Stakeholder Consensus: Achieved consensus and alignment among stakeholders, fostering a shared understanding of project goals and objectives
Defined the UX Guiding Principles
Building Trust and Confidence
Understanding the Customer
Through workshops, user interviews, and surveys, it became evident that Field Sales Leaders (FSLs) and Agents struggled with accessing and interpreting over 200 fragmented financial reports essential for setting and tracking sales goals. This complexity caused confusion, leading to missed targets and ineffective planning. FSLs spent excessive time preparing for consultations, complicating scheduling. Additionally, uncertainty about ROI made Agents hesitant to invest in growth, with some relying on paid third-party services for strategic planning—highlighting the need for a more streamlined solution.
Supporting Trust Through Principles
- Centralized Data Hub: Develop a single platform to consolidate all financial reports and relevant data, giving Agents easy access to comprehensive information to manage and track sales performance independently
- Real-Time Feedback and Insights: Implement a system that provides real-time feedback and analytics, enabling Agents to immediately understand the impact of their actions and adjust strategies on the fly
- Custom Goal-Setting Tool: Create a tool that allows Agents to set and adjust sales goals based on personalized data and insights, enabling them to tailor strategies to their specific business needs
- Empowered Decision-Making: Design tools that allow Agents to analyze data, set goals, and adjust strategies independently, reducing reliance on FSLs and fostering greater autonomy and ownership of business outcomes
Testing Concepts
Guiding the User-Centric Exploration:
During the testing phase, our primary focus was to ensure that the platform effectively addressed the pain points of both agents and FSLs. Additionally, we aimed to assess whether agents had a clear understanding of the products and quantities they needed to sell, and whether they trusted and found value in the tool. Furthermore, we sought to determine the time it took for users to complete the process.
Stakeholder Involvement:
Our stakeholders actively participated as observers during all interviews. This allowed them to gain firsthand feedback on the prototype. Following each study, we conducted debrief sessions to exchange notes on observations and insights gathered.
Methods Used:
- 1-Hour Remote Interviews: We conducted remote interviews lasting 45 minutes each to gather insights from agents and FSLs
- Rose, Thorn, Bud: This method enabled participants to provide feedback on what they liked (rose), disliked (thorn), and anticipated (bud) regarding the prototype
Stimuli:
The stimuli used during interviews were wireframes representing different stages of the platform's interface.
Testing with Real Users
Shaping Product Development with Research:
Our UX testing revealed key insights into the effectiveness of our approach and the tool developed for Allstate agents and Field Sales Leaders (FSLs). The tool demonstrated strong user acceptance, with participants quickly recognizing its value and finding it intuitive in helping them understand their progress and goals. It effectively clarified the compensation structure, leading to more confident decision-making, while the simulation feature was praised for its role in supporting strategic planning. However, the testing also highlighted areas for improvement, including the need for more transparent ROI metrics and enhanced customer retention features. These findings will inform ongoing iterations to ensure the tool better aligns with the needs and expectations of its users.
User Feedback
Visual Design:
Ensuring Design Consistency and System Alignment
For the final design artifacts, new components were designed to meet user needs and had to be reviewed and approved by the Design System Team to ensure consistency and adherence to established design guidelines.
Summary
Achievements and Impact
The project introduced a strategic tool powered by machine learning and Allstate’s Data Science department, D3, to empower agents with data-driven decision-making capabilities. By consolidating fragmented reports and automating the sales planning process, the tool enabled agents to independently strategize, project outcomes, and make informed investment decisions to drive business growth.
Key Accomplishments:
- Empowered Independent Decision-Making: Enabled agents to make faster, more confident decisions by providing clear insights and streamlined processes, reducing reliance on FSLs by 80% and putting agents more in control of their strategies
- Improved Forecast Accuracy and Sales Growth: After 18 months of model maturation, the machine learning models achieved a 25% increase in forecast accuracy and a 15% boost in sales growth for agents
- Streamlined Access to Comprehensive Financial Data: Unified over 300 fragmented financial reports into a single, easy-to-navigate platform, enhancing agents’ ability to interpret key sales and investment information efficiently
- Enhanced ROI Potential through Strategic Planning: Automated the sales planning process, allowing agents to adjust strategies based on real-time data and optimize resource allocation, leading to more targeted actions and clearer ROI projections
40
Agent Interviews
4
FSL Interviews
47 Hrs
Saved Per Consultation
1
Prototype
UX Achievements and Recognition
Showcasing Impact and Planning Future Enhancements
The project was so successful that it earned a spot at the biennial Allstate convention, where it was showcased as a key innovation for empowering agents with data-driven decision-making tools. The tool’s impact on improving sales strategies and helping agents make informed investment decisions was highly praised. I had the opportunity to present and promote the tool personally, engaging with key stakeholders, agents, and Field Sales Leaders (FSLs), which led to positive feedback and increased adoption.
Next Steps:
- Refine Machine Learning Models: Collaborate with D3 to enhance predictive capabilities using new data and feedback
- Expand Data Integration: Incorporate additional data sources, such as market trends, to provide more comprehensive insights
- Develop Training Programs: Create training sessions and resources to help agents and FSLs effectively use the tool
- Monitor Adoption and Impact: Establish metrics to track usage, adoption rates, and the tool’s impact on agent performance
- Iterate and Improve Based on Feedback: Continuously collect feedback to refine the tool’s features and ensure it meets evolving needs
- Scale Deployment to Additional Regions: Gradually expand the tool’s availability to more regions and teams to increase its impact and utility
