Get to know our experts. This series of blogs discusses how Vertafore leaders work for our customers.
While visiting a small agency in a rural community as part of Vertafore’s Project Impact, Erin Holloway saw firsthand how personal an insurance agent’s role can be.
When clients have a problem or can’t afford a new rate, they’re likely to come into the office instead of sending an email. Every client is a face and someone that the agents see all the time, she says.
The toughest part of their job is trying to explain that they’ve got to raise their rates because of something that happened in Florida. These folks are pillars of their own communities, and when their clients have a bad day, so do they,”
As Vertafore’s director of product design, Erin Holloway keeps her team focused on the human element of user experience so agency professionals can focus on their clients.
Human-centered design that simplifies insurance workflows
Holloway helps Vertafore’s product designers focus on creating a people-focused technology experience.
Vertafore’s product design team involves designers and researchers, and Holloway says she’s lucky to get to spend time meeting customers face-to-face to understand their work and their problems.
Together, they work to ensure the user experience (UX) of Vertafore’s technology empowers our customers to focus less on their software and spend more time working with their clients.
“We’ve got huge clients with teams and teams to fill the roles they need, and then we’ve got mom and pop shops that are doing it themselves. Our software has to work for all of them,” Holloway notes.
When agents are working directly with clients, “there’s a lot of problem solving, there’s a lot of therapy, there’s a lot of connection,” she says. “The user experience has to be dead simple so that they can get back to those needs that their clients have.”
Designing software for an insurance industry in transition
Many insurance professionals have been in their careers for decades and are selling their agency or handing it off to a family member or new owner.
“You have a lot of these agencies who have had these owners who have built these businesses for 50-plus years, and they want to leave a legacy when they retire. So how do we continue to make a consistent experience for them, but then also how do we update their software to work in the ways that these folks who are taking the reins are used to working?”
And in updating software, Holloway says her team focuses on connecting the dots between solutions, so users can move between products without feeling like they are doing similar tasks in different ways.
The goal across the board is to make the software feel intuitive, so insurance professionals can use those tools to support their clients without needing extensive training.
Helping insurance agents navigate an AI-powered future
AI is changing the insurance industry. Looking ahead, Holloway says she’s excited to see the ways she can use it to improve users’ experiences with technology.
I’m excited about how we can take a lot of the efficiencies—the day-to-day workflow, duplicate entry—that we’re hoping we can take off our agents’ plates so they can get back to the important work: building their relationships.”
While looking for efficiencies with AI, Holloway still couches her anticipation within the guiding principle of keeping people at the center. “AI is never going to replace the human experience.”