Recently we had an opportunity to speak with Sarah Dignardi, the Senior Mobility Manager at Selective Insurance about MySelective

Please share with us the backstory of what motivated you to create this app.

Our 'customer first' focus at Selective aligns with our 'Be Uniquely Insured' brand promise, which was the inspiration behind the MySelective mobile app redesign. To be successful in the customer and user experience space, we firmly believe we need to provide a unique experience that can beat that of our competition. And our competition is broad. Customers don't just measure us against other insurance carriers, but rather against each organization with whom they interact. Such an expansive field of comparison raises the bar on what customers expect a superior mobile app experience to be. Our MySelective mobile app update was a holistic change to introduce a cohesive user experience along with modern design elements. We streamlined many process flows for our app users, making ordinary tasks much easier to complete. Customer reviews demonstrate our customer's satisfaction – we rapidly went from 3.9 stars to 4.6 stars in the App Store during the three months following the release of MySelective! That's a huge improvement over our previous iPhone app rating, which held steady in 2019 at 2.6 stars.

What features do you hope to roll out to your app in the future?

Our roadmap is a living document and responds to changes in the marketplace and customer behavior over time, as it must. As of right now, we would love to continue building up valuable services for our commercial customers. We also plan to leverage native device and OS capabilities in the form of helpful widgets and possibly introduce voice commands/navigation to make it even easier for our customers to interact with their accounts.

What has been the most rewarding aspect of the creation of this app?

The MySelective mobile app was a lift and transformation compared to our prior iteration and a testament to the diligence of multiple internal teams. It's been extremely rewarding to see its success, which has manifested through increased adoption in the months following release, a dramatic increase in our star rating, and of course, winning this prestigious mobile app award!

What is the coolest or most innovative feature of your app?

The MySelective mobile app has a uniquely fast account activation process! This is a new process that securely recognizes customers by email address or cell phone number and fast-tracks customers to the insurance account information they need. This reduced the need for customers to have policy information readily available during account setup. Since the launch of our updated mobile app, our weekly activation rate has increased approximately 45%.

What surprised you most in your journey to create this app?

Partnering with Selective's Marketing Design team and conducting usability testing were very eye-opening. When you are so close to a product, it's easy to forget what it's like to see it for the first time with fresh eyes, and it's hard to "unlearn" everything you have come to know about it. Our designer was able to streamline multiple processes that hadn't been updated in several iterations, while usability testing identified friction points that we were able to proactively remedy.

Which other mobile apps or technology have inspired you?

There are so many great apps available, and these are what we looked at for inspiration and motivation as we created our mobile roadmap and vision. Customer experience encompasses every interaction a user has, from asking a smart assistant what the weather will be and listening to satellite radio through a smartphone, to paying bills from a PC during lunch. We believe every user is unique and therefore should always have a choice to address their unique needs, including choice of channel, choice of device, and choice of notification types. To build a mobile app according to that philosophy, we regularly research new technology and app offerings across all industries, as well as track customer behavior and trends so we can offer our customers the most value.

Do you have any recommendations or advice for others wanting to create a mobile app?

Don't reinvent the wheel if you don't have to. If this your first time creating a mobile app, do a lot of homework and consider partnerships with providers who offer solutions you can build from and customize over time. But, do your research. Know what your customers need and want. Read between the lines when collecting feedback from them. Knowing what they don't want can be as important as knowing what they do want. Finally, surround yourself with people smarter than you and include them in this process. Your end result will be far better than you ever imagined.

How did you decide which platforms to release your app on and do you plan on releasing your app to other platforms?

The MySelective mobile app has always been available on iPhone via the App Store and Android via Google Play. Since our market is the United States, it made sense to continue with these two channels.

How is your app different than the rest of the market? Which unique need does it fill?

Customers with a business insurance policy are underserved in the mobile space. However, their needs are frequently similar to customers with personal insurance, meaning they can also benefit from easy, on-the-go account access and management. The MySelective app provides a robust self-service experience for all insurance customers, business and personal alike. This includes easy access to billing information and the ability to make payments, as well as to view auto ID cards and request certificates of liability insurance, which are delivered in real-time for eligible policies. And, because Selective understands the unique needs of business insurance customers, MySelective lets them manage (add/edit) additional contacts to ensure that designated employees receive important bill reminders, vehicle and product recalls and severe weather alerts, ensuring the right person in their organization gets the right information.

You can view MySelective here