Voluntary Benefits
Published by Michael Sauer on February 1st, 2021
Over the past year, the pandemic has accelerated companies’ digital roadmaps as organizations large and small have had to pivot to digital experiences and transform aspects of their businesses. What was once a face-to-face, physical experience quickly became a digital self-serve customer journey. And now that we’re living in a contactless society trying to stay safe, from buying a car to buying Girl Scout cookies from a neighbor, online digital platforms are used to engage customers, showcase offerings, and drive product sales. Influenced by Amazon, Apple, and Netflix, a simple one-click digital experience is now the customer’s expectation for all brands. So, as we think about benefit enrollment for employers and employees, how has the insurance industry kept up? How do we deliver a self-service enrollment experience that meets the needs and expectations of our customers?
Recently, Trustmark took a human-centered approach to redesigning our benefit enrollment platforms – here are six key lessons we learned to help you create a digital self-service enrollment experience focused on the Employee with the following goals in mind:
In today’s world, video is king. A picture’s worth a thousand words, but a video’s worth even more. More than 70 percent of people prefer video to text for learning about products.1 With that in mind, we weren’t afraid to redesign our enrollment experience to lead with video. Video is an easy way to communicate complicated subject content and educate customers about your product or service. Videos can also create emotion to connect with users and make the experience meaningful.
In the insurance world, we tend to rely heavily on text and long-winded explanations of benefits. In addition to video, we recommend making content more engaging with more visuals such as icons, infographics, and data visualizations to quickly and clearly convey information in a way that’s easily digestible for employees.
Lesson 2 – Streamline the information
In a world of Twitter feeds, fast-paced scrolling, and short customer attention spans, you don’t necessarily have time to impart long and complicated information. Consumers expect streamlined information, and it’s in your best interest to give it to them, or you may lose them as they lose interest. You can do this in a few ways: pithy headlines, bullet points, and lists. In the same way that a visual framework can make your content more engaging, how you structure your content on the page can retain your reader’s attention. Good copywriting will keep users engaged, so keep it simple, concise, and compelling. Today, less is often more.
Lesson 3 – Make it real
The biggest challenge during benefit enrollment is helping customers understand the value that insurance products can provide them and their families. By providing contextualized, real-world examples, customers will be able to see themselves in these types of situations and make better insurance decisions. So, how do we create a contextualized benefit enrollment experience? A few strategies can help:
Too often, a language barrier exists between insurance carriers and consumers. We speak in the language of insurance, but that’s not something that consumers easily understand. A survey found that only seven percent of employees could define four basic health insurance concepts: plan premium, deductible, co-insurance, and out-of-pocket maximum.2 This is more about content than design, but it’s worth noting because great design can only go so far if you’re speaking a language employees don’t understand. In short, avoid jargon, use short sentences and ensure that your communications are focused around key points without weighing them down with extraneous details.
Lesson 5 – Reduce barriers
Less than 25% of employees participate in benefit enrollment – most abandon the process and application mid-journey, never to select benefits they and their families need. By providing visibility to the process and listing information they will need to complete enrollment, employees are less likely to abandon enrollment and waive benefits. For example, beginning the enrollment process with a helpful overview of what to expect, useful tips and tricks, and a list of the necessary information to have handy can get the process off to a great start and eliminate any potential roadblocks later in the process. Progress bars highlighting key steps can manage time expectations and motivate users to completion.
Lesson 6 – Measure success (and failures)
Last, but not least, prepare yourself for future success by measuring key metrics and using the data you collect for continuous improvement. Key metrics to consider:
Here at Trustmark, we’ve made great strides towards creating a better digital enrollment experience for our clients and their employees. And it’s our responsibility and the responsibility of our industry colleagues to advocate for our users, use human-centered design to create meaningful user journeys, and apply data analytics to continually improve the digital experience.
1 2018 ‘State of Video Marketing’ survey. Wyzowl. 2019.
2 “Employees struggle with benefits terminology”. Employee Benefit News. Sept, 2016.
Recently, Trustmark took a human-centered approach to redesigning our benefit enrollment platforms – here are six key lessons we learned to help you create a digital self-service enrollment experience focused on the Employee with the following goals in mind:
- Help employees get the right coverage they need
- Increase employee participation
In today’s world, video is king. A picture’s worth a thousand words, but a video’s worth even more. More than 70 percent of people prefer video to text for learning about products.1 With that in mind, we weren’t afraid to redesign our enrollment experience to lead with video. Video is an easy way to communicate complicated subject content and educate customers about your product or service. Videos can also create emotion to connect with users and make the experience meaningful.
In the insurance world, we tend to rely heavily on text and long-winded explanations of benefits. In addition to video, we recommend making content more engaging with more visuals such as icons, infographics, and data visualizations to quickly and clearly convey information in a way that’s easily digestible for employees.
Lesson 2 – Streamline the information
In a world of Twitter feeds, fast-paced scrolling, and short customer attention spans, you don’t necessarily have time to impart long and complicated information. Consumers expect streamlined information, and it’s in your best interest to give it to them, or you may lose them as they lose interest. You can do this in a few ways: pithy headlines, bullet points, and lists. In the same way that a visual framework can make your content more engaging, how you structure your content on the page can retain your reader’s attention. Good copywriting will keep users engaged, so keep it simple, concise, and compelling. Today, less is often more.
Lesson 3 – Make it real
The biggest challenge during benefit enrollment is helping customers understand the value that insurance products can provide them and their families. By providing contextualized, real-world examples, customers will be able to see themselves in these types of situations and make better insurance decisions. So, how do we create a contextualized benefit enrollment experience? A few strategies can help:
- Create contextualized stories about other people’s insurance experiences and life event scenarios with real-world costs to guide customers towards the most relevant products
- Develop interactive digital tools such as coverage calculators to help customers calculate life insurance coverage based on their outstanding debt; mortgage, tuition, credit cards, medical bills, etc.
- Provide coverage recommendations based on data and analytics (demographics or what their co-workers are electing for their benefits) to help customers confidently select the right coverage they need.
Too often, a language barrier exists between insurance carriers and consumers. We speak in the language of insurance, but that’s not something that consumers easily understand. A survey found that only seven percent of employees could define four basic health insurance concepts: plan premium, deductible, co-insurance, and out-of-pocket maximum.2 This is more about content than design, but it’s worth noting because great design can only go so far if you’re speaking a language employees don’t understand. In short, avoid jargon, use short sentences and ensure that your communications are focused around key points without weighing them down with extraneous details.
Lesson 5 – Reduce barriers
Less than 25% of employees participate in benefit enrollment – most abandon the process and application mid-journey, never to select benefits they and their families need. By providing visibility to the process and listing information they will need to complete enrollment, employees are less likely to abandon enrollment and waive benefits. For example, beginning the enrollment process with a helpful overview of what to expect, useful tips and tricks, and a list of the necessary information to have handy can get the process off to a great start and eliminate any potential roadblocks later in the process. Progress bars highlighting key steps can manage time expectations and motivate users to completion.
Lesson 6 – Measure success (and failures)
Last, but not least, prepare yourself for future success by measuring key metrics and using the data you collect for continuous improvement. Key metrics to consider:
- Engagement – What videos did employees watch? Did they watch them to the end? Did they engage any digital tools or interactive content?
- Conversion – What products were elected or waived? What coverage amounts were selected?
- Abandonment – How many people didn’t complete the process? Where did they stop in the enrollment process?
Here at Trustmark, we’ve made great strides towards creating a better digital enrollment experience for our clients and their employees. And it’s our responsibility and the responsibility of our industry colleagues to advocate for our users, use human-centered design to create meaningful user journeys, and apply data analytics to continually improve the digital experience.
1 2018 ‘State of Video Marketing’ survey. Wyzowl. 2019.
2 “Employees struggle with benefits terminology”. Employee Benefit News. Sept, 2016.
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Written by Michael Sauer
Senior Director, Digital Design
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