ZS custom mobile reporting elevates insurance agent engagement

The challenge

A leading Fortune 500 insurance firm distributed its products through several thousand independent sales agents.

Launching incentive contests to drive sales performance was a common tactic, but management found it difficult to engage their sales force throughout the duration of contest periods. Contests were launched rather quickly, generating gaps in awareness, participation and field reporting.

As a result, the firm had low levels of engagement among its agents. Sales contests rarely achieved positive ROI because they faced challenges, including:

• Motivating agents and shaping behaviors that were aligned with company goals
• Obtaining greater mind share from the sales force, especially during incentive periods
• Keeping infrastructure costs low, because their contest reporting requires significant resources
• Pushing sales reports to the field was not optimal; reports were only accessible through company’s intranet portal
• Consuming large, hard-to-read files is a suboptimal experience, especially when these files are not customized for the individuals consuming them

The solution

ZS believed the insurance firm could better maximize the value of its incentives through new ways of elevating performance. ZS uncovered an opportunity to change the way performance was managed and communicated—converting static reports into more engaging, user-friendly digital tools. We built a custom mobile application where agents and managers could check their real-time performance, compare themselves to their peers and stay up-to-date on their progress to goal through custom push notifications and smart alerts—better driving promotion, awareness and engagement during incentive periods.

Our approach to delivering a mobile app was to:

• Understand needs and processes:  We identified use cases, processes and requirements through interviews and feedback from sales and IT.
• Develop a prototype: We created an early prototype through several rounds of wireframes and mockup iterations with sales leadership.
• Technology assessment: We analyzed best-in-class back-end hosting and processing systems to serve as a scalable platform based on client needs and IT requirements.
• Design and development: We applied best-in-class UI and UX practices for iOS and Android operating systems and developed the app using an agile approach as we built the front and back-end systems.
• Testing and launch: We collaborated with IT to ensure all security protocols were met, and we stress-tested the applications to ensure they were scalable. We tested the app in pilot markets prior to an on-time national rollout.

The impact

The developed real-time incentive contest app features:

• Password-protected access to custom, individualized reporting
• The ability to view current sales performance and progress to goal through appealing visualizations
• Visibility into a leaderboard that ranked agents by sales with the ability to search for specific agents in the market
• The ability for first-line managers to view their teams’ performance during the contest period
• Contest rules and guidelines easily available for reference
• Personalized notifications that informed agents about their current performance, distance from goal and time remaining in the contest period

The impact of the real-time incentive contest app included:

• App users that received customized notifications opened 10% more new accounts on average during the contest period than the holdout group.
• First-line managers attained 12% incremental average quota compared to the users who did not use the app.
• App users produced 26% more in sales and opened twice as many new accounts compared to non-app users who had similar production levels prior to app launch.