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Case study: Onboarding for a new product experience
How do you introduce a new experience to a customer in the app flow without naming it something different, or when your marketing doesn't even acknowledge that there are different experiences for different people?
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Here's how we tackled this tough one.
Content Design | Content Strategy
What's the problem?
Root car insurance was started with a pretty simple premise: You download the app, then take the test drive for a few weeks while the app measures your driving behavior. You then receive (or don't receive) a quote based primarily on how you drive.
The initial Root experience left out a lot of people - anyone who didn't have time to take a test drive for a few weeks before purchasing insurance, or people who didn't have any insurance and therefore couldn't (legally) drive at all.
So Root created an additional experience.
The Problem?
Root doesn't market that it has different experiences. You are given a particular experience based on your data, such as whether or not you are currently insured. So, Root needed a way to onboard a customer to a particular experience that may be different than what they were expecting. Or, a customer may not know anything about Root and needed a way to learn about how Root worked—or at least, was going to work for them—to set and manage expectations.
The onboarding product design team was tasked with:
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Developing the content strategy for how we message our new products
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Creating a clear user experience that would set the correct expectations of the product
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The Team + Stakeholders
Product design
UX Copy Lead (me!)
Product Designer
Chief Creative Officer
Content Manager
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Product
Chief Product Officer
Product Manager
Engineering
Onboarding Engineering Team
Here's what we did
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The new product experience allows a customer to sign up for insurance before taking the test drive. The rate is good for 60 days. Based on their 30 day test drive results, they receive a new rate that starts once the first 60 days are up, or Root may also cancel their insurance when those 60 days are up.
Part I
I needed a way to differentiate this experience from the original Root experience, in which you can't get insurance until after the test drive. The business did not want to have an external name for the product. So, I developed messaging as "being insured from day 1" or "being offered insurance from day 1" as a means of setting up this new experience for the customer. We then utilized this messaging to introduce the onboarding screens as well as on our web FAQs, so that existing customers could self-select into the correct FAQs.
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Part II
I also established the messaging of "30 days to drive" and "30 days to decide." I used this as a way to simplify the message and clearly convey the most important information a customer needed to take away from the onboarding screens. The test drive would last for 30 days, and then they would have 30 days to decide if they wanted to accept the new rate we offered them based on how they drove. This was also a valuable marketing tool for email campaigns—we used this same messaging throughout the customer journey to reiterate the experience in reminder and next step communications.
These screens were the result of whiteboarding messaging strategies with my manager and wireframing with the product designer, creating an information hierarchy and on-brand design that would be helpful, informative, and engaging to the customer.
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Part III
I created the language for how we talk about canceling a customer's insurance. There was heated debate within the company about how transparent to be about the fact that someone could lose their insurance based on their driving behavior. Content design took a stance that we have to let a customer know so that they can make a fully informed decision about our product. We used the language "Root may not continue to insure you" as a means of informing the customer without using the jarring (and internally contentious) word "cancel." This language has proven enormously successful, has legal on board, and it has been established as the way we speak to customers about potentially being canceled in other onboarding and email communications.
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So, what happened?
• 92% of users choose to continue through the onboarding screens and into the quote experience
• Follow-up user interviews and customer service tickets have shown that customers have a solid understanding of the experience. One potential customer shared that she actually chose not to continue with Root because she was too worried about having her insurance canceled as a result of her driving. While we don't like to lose customers, it was another example that we were effectively communicating vital information and living up to our company value of transparency, as well as our content design value of helping customers make informed decisions.
• The onboarding experience earned a CSCA Creative Best award for product design