Delivering a seamless Home Assistance Experience: From local pilot to global solution

In recent years, a global French multinational insurance company embarked on a broad digital transformation across its service lines—including Home, Motor, Legal, Health, and Consumer Electronics—with a strong emphasis on customer-centric design and scalable digital solutions tailored to local market needs.

As part of this transformation, multiple digital initiatives were launched to improve user experience and operational efficiency across business units. This article focuses on one such project: the creation of a modular digital platform to help policyholders manage their home assistance claims with greater ease and transparency. It serves as a concrete example of the approach we applied across the organization—an approach rooted in collaboration, research, and scalable design principles.

The starting point: A local MVP with global potential

The project began in the United Kingdom, where we launched an MVP to offer customers a real-time, mobile-first solution for tracking home assistance service cases—without requiring downloads, logins, or phone calls.

We initiated the project with a kick-off workshop involving stakeholders from business, operations, marketing, and IT, aligning on expectations, requirements, and customer journey goals. From this foundation, we developed a user flow focused on clarity, then prototyped and tested the experience with 8 participants over 2 weeks, collecting 484 minutes of usability insights that led to valuable refinements.

This led to key design improvements and insights:

• Users appreciated the simplicity and clarity.
• Suggestions were made to make certain visual elements more prominent.
• There was appreciation for not needing a password or an app download.

The resulting solution provided users with instant access via SMS, connected to real-time updates through backend contractor systems. It significantly reduced service call volume and improved the perceived transparency of the process.

Building a modular, adaptable platform

Based on the success of the initial rollout, the concept evolved into a modular global platform—not a fixed multi-country product, but a flexible design system that allowed each country to configure its own experience based on local needs.

Spain became the next market to explore adoption. We conducted a collaborative workshop with stakeholders from across departments to:

• Understand local workflows.
• Capture regulatory and operational constraints.
• Validate a localized user journey.

This led to the development of market-specific personas and a second testing phase involving 25 users over 2,000 minutes. Insights included:

• A need for greater clarity around policy coverage.
• Desire for direct contact with service providers.
• Preference for detailed service history.
• Expectation of more contextual information to manage day-to-day life.

To support market-level flexibility, the platform allowed configuration of language, branding, features, and content dynamically via the incoming URL, enabling other countries rapid adaptation to reconfigure the web-app without rebuilding it, making it truly scalable and adaptable, without compromising design consistency.

From insight to action: Meaningful features that made a difference

One of the key outcomes of the project was our ability to translate user feedback into practical, high-impact features that addressed real pain points. Rather than stopping at insights, we implemented functionalities that made the experience truly helpful—reducing uncertainty, improving autonomy, and cutting down on repeat contact.

Some of the most effective additions included:

• Rescheduling appointments directly with the service provider, giving users more flexibility and reducing friction caused by timing conflicts.
• Allowing users to leave comments for the provider, such as specific instructions, directions, or access information—improving the success rate of first visits and overall satisfaction.
• Uploading photos of the incident, enabling users to visually describe the issue before the provider's arrival. This not only helped the provider come better prepared, but also supported internal damage assessment processes related to the user’s policy. It allowed the company to identify coverage opportunities and edge cases in a non-intrusive and efficient manner.

These features became critical differentiators, reducing the need for second calls and enhancing both the user experience and internal operational effectiveness. They also opened new pathways for value creation—balancing customer empowerment with process optimization.

Conclusion

This home assistance project was one of several successful initiatives delivered under my responsibility as UX Lead, during a period of digital growth at this global insurance company. While not singular or exceptional within the broader portfolio, it is a strong example of how modular, user-centered design and cross-functional collaboration can drive measurable value across markets.

The solution has since continued to evolve, adding new features like digital case creation and expanding into countries such as France and Belgium—further demonstrating the scalability and relevance of the design foundation we established.

Although I have since transitioned to new professional challenges, I look back at this project—and others from that period—with pride. They reflect the impact of strategic UX leadership, consistent execution, and a deep commitment to delivering real value for both users and the business.