Commissions is a feature of SaaS software that allows small independent insurance agencies to calculate agent commissions.

My role:
I led the design from UX audit to launch.
I collaborated with:
  • Project Manager
  • UI Developer team
  • Backend Developer team
  • Marketing team
  • Customer Support team
The Outcome:
  • 80% increase in NPS
  • 28% churn reduction
  • 70% increase in feature adoption
  • 87% reduction in commissions related complaints
  • 80% reduction in customer training time for this feature
The Problem:

High effort, unreliable result

87%
87% customers were abandoning commissions right at the beginning phase.
+$30K per month
Agencies were loosing on average, +30K per month due to errors in commissions process
4 different tools
Every pay cycle, agencies needed to toggle between 4 different tools to calculate and pay an agent
The Audience:

Agency Owners

Agency Owners needed a reliable and efficient solution to pay agents a correct amount at the end of every pay cycle.

Why do 87% of users abandon commissions even before the initial setup?

1. Commissions setup is tedious
Users are required to manually navigate hundreds of carriers, each providing hundreds of policies, to select the ones they work with. 60% of users abandon right at this step.
2. Confusing navigation with heavy cognitive effort
3. Huge manual effort
Customers expect setup and payment to take up to 1 hour, while in reality it takes on average 4 days.
4. Missing important information
Customers expect setup and payment to take up to 1 hour, while in reality it takes on average 4 days.
"We use Excel to calculate commissions. It takes a full day to prep the data, 20-30 edits, and multiple back and forth between the team. All being said, it is a 2-3 day venture." - Collin Smith, Agency owner
Process Mapping:

To identify bottleneck experiences

Competitor studies:

To identify good and bad experiences

Competitor A
Competitor B
How might we?

How might we?

1. Automization
HMW reduce manual data entry?
2. Benefit-first
HMW guide new users to pay agents in less than 1 hour confidently?

Ideally, we would provide the ability to download the *IVANS data to help validate the information right in the table. However, due to the big technical effort, we decided to take another route with low-tech effort that still benefits the user. We chose to showcase IVANS status (downloaded, pending, and manual) in the table.

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* IVANS - IVANS Download™ is connectivity software for automated policy-related information exchange.
Experimenting solutions:

Design iterations

Image: Existing table design
Image: Addition of IVANS status column
Image: 3. To increase transparency, we displayed the commission plan, rate and added a column that automatically calculated the producer pay.
Image: Addition of deferred payments
Next Challenge:

Designing the user flow

To reduce the time it takes to process the commissions, I needed to design a system that would convey a streamlined flow.
For this, I first figured out the different logical entry points for users, finalized a written user flow, and eventually started working on design sketches.
Image: Basic structure of commissions
Image: Documents defining entry points and steps for a smooth user flow
Prototype:

Final solution