Customer experience design for Zurich UK
Overview
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A message came down from Zurich’s global headquarters in Zurich: one of the company’s new strategic pillars would be a deeper understanding of our customers—laying the foundation for a more joined-up, consistent brand and customer experience.
Zurich UK offers a wide range of insurance products and services, delivered through a mix of direct channels, aggregators, brokers, and financial advisers. These are underwritten and serviced by different departments, teams, and even third parties—often working independently across various regions and time zones.
Before we could begin to improve the external customer experience (CX and UX), it was clear we needed to first improve internal alignment—helping teams across the business gain a better understanding of who our customers are, what we offer them, and how their journeys differ across our many touchpoints. This foundational work would also support our wider goal of improving EMPS scores and customer satisfaction.
Step 1: Creating an engaging format
Designing an Interactive Experience to Build Customer Understanding at Zurich
To bring Zurich’s customer-first focus to life, I set out to design an interactive event that broke away from the typical presentation format. While traditional talks about customer centricity can be informative, they’re often passive—and ultimately forgettable. I wanted to create something hands-on, engaging, and genuinely memorable.
My goal was to connect colleagues from different business areas—each focused on a specific set of products and often siloed from one another—and encourage cross-functional collaboration. I also wanted to bring together different roles within those areas, from operations and marketing to frontline teams, to foster shared understanding.
To kick things off, I conducted in-depth interviews with teams across the business, including General Insurance, Life Insurance, Commercial, Financial Services, Public Sector, and High Net Worth. These conversations gave me valuable insight into the needs of their customers and the challenges they faced internally.
With that foundation in place, I began engaging and recruiting volunteers from across the UK—representing each business area—to help shape and take part in the experience.
Step 2: Engaging regional offices
Bringing Customer Understanding to Life: Rolling Out Interactive Events Nationwide
With key insights gathered and high-level personas developed, the next step was turning this into action—by engaging teams across the business and launching a series of face-to-face interactive events.
To make it work, I called on each UK office to nominate volunteers to help bring the experience to life. This was a fresh approach for many of our more traditional office environments, spanning locations from London and Birmingham to Glasgow and Swindon.
Once I had buy-in from volunteers and had clearly communicated the vision, I partnered with the internal events team to coordinate logistics, organise attendee sign-ups, and secure venues.
I then focused on identifying the most traditional or change-resistant offices—choosing to personally host events in those locations to help build momentum, encourage participation, and lead by example.
Step 3: Creating personas
Developing Personas and Coordinating Event Logistics
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Using insights from interviews with frontline staff, underwriters, brokers, and end-clients, I created a set of high-level personas—one for each business area. These personas helped to better understand the unique needs of each customer group.
Next, I matched each persona to the products that would best meet their requirements. After collaborating with legal and securing sign-off (a thorough but essential process!), I crafted a script for event volunteers to guide them through the day.
I also developed a separate script for event leads at each location, instructing attendees to pick up persona cards and visit the relevant ‘stall’ where a Zurich representative would explain the products tailored to each persona's needs.
Step 4: Script writing
Script Development and Volunteer Training
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I created a detailed, persona-based script that was thoroughly reviewed by legal and underwriting, but still kept engaging and approachable.
To ensure volunteers were prepared, I sent the script ahead of time and held a call with each office's volunteer team to walk them through the content. This helped them feel confident in their role as Zurich representatives, explaining products to attendees.
It was rewarding to connect with colleagues across different business areas, and the volunteers really enjoyed stepping away from their desks to role-play rather than just attend a presentation. The experience fostered great collaboration and gave everyone—myself included—a deeper understanding of how the business operates.