Designing clear, high-performing insurance experiences around real customer intent.

The Challenge with the Legacy Guide

Following Direct Line's shift from "We're on it / Just what's needed" (2025) to the new "That's how it's done" brand platform (2026), the existing 29-page Tone of Voice guide was no longer fit for digital product or servicing teams:

• Confused Voice with Mechanics: Mixed high-level brand attitude with step-by-step instructions on how to open the spellchecker in Microsoft Word and dismissive grammar advice ("Don't tie yourself up in knots over grammar... invite them to go away and check").
• Risky Stylistic Prompts: A dedicated page urged writers to "Use poetic effects" like alliteration and "words with zip"—risking clever wordplay over comprehension in regulated insurance journeys.
• No High-Stakes Emotional Guardrails: Lacked actionable rules for handling stressed or upset customers during claims, complaints, or renewal price increases.

Strategic Overhaul & Governance

I redesigned the guide from the ground up into "How It's Done: Writing for Direct Line":

• Architectural Separation: Drew a hard line on Page 2 between Voice (personality and attitude) and Content Guidelines (grammar, accessibility, SEO, glossary terms, and formatting conventions).
• Dual Audience Alignment: Built explicitly for both writers (web, print, email, letters, scripts, product journeys, support) and reviewers/approvers needing a shared standard for "what good looks like".
• Comprehension First Rule: Anchored the 1-page Cheat Sheet in a single governing principle: "If the customer can't understand it quickly, nothing else matters. Start with clarity, then add Direct Line personality."

The Proposition & Regulatory Challenge

Home Essentials was created for price-conscious buyers, offering a lower price in exchange for reduced cover, lower limits, higher excesses, fewer standard features, and an online-first service.

As Content Design Lead across Product, UX, Underwriting, Compliance, Financial Promotions, and Marketing, I structured the journey around six fundamental customer questions:

• What is the difference between the three product tiers?
• Why does Home Essentials cost less, and what is/isn't included?
• How much will I actually pay out-of-pocket if I make a claim?
• Which features need to be added separately as optional extras?

Research-Led Content Interventions

• Progressive Tier Comparison: Replaced decorative ticks with neutral bullets and made features build incrementally across the three tiers so trade-offs were unmistakable.
• Removing Misleading Microcopy: Changed "Included at no extra cost" (which implied higher-tier features were free) to "Included if you choose Home Insurance Plus".
• Retiring "Premium" Jargon: Research showed users confused "premium" with a higher-quality product tier. Replaced it with "What you pay".
• Scenario-Tested Excess Tables: Tested whether customers could calculate what they'd pay for realistic claims (escape of water, subsidence, theft). Added dividing lines, improved mobile layout, and stripped out copy bloat.
• Explicit Optionality: Used the clear label "Optional" where price noise risked making add-ons appear automatically included, and resolved cross-system naming inconsistencies before launch.

Part 1: Fixing Sign-In, Activation & Error States

• One-Time Passcode (OTP) Flow: Replaced password dependency with a succinct 3-step email OTP journey, removing competing instructions during a high-pressure moment.
• Designing Around Success Over Preference: Used live variant data (showing 1,353 password attempts produced only 996 successful logins) to successfully argue against giving passwords equal visual prominence with OTP.
• Instant Activation Recovery: Unactivated accounts automatically received a fresh setup email rather than dead-ending in password resets.
• Humanising Backend Errors: Replaced system messages exposing "authentication IDs" and "account matching failures" with service-owned, blame-free guidance.
• Improving Usability Testing (SUS): Rewrote academic System Usability Scale survey prompts (removing words like "cumbersome") into plain task language ("I found the website complicated to use").

Part 2: Redesigning the Post-Sign-In Account

• Replacing "Make a Change" Jargon: Virtual Assistant data showed "How do I make a change?" drove 59,034 queries (10.21% of servicing volume). Replaced generic labels with concrete tasks: "Add a driver", "Change your registration", and "Change your excess".
• Click-Testing Cancellation Placement: Overturned the internal assumption that users look under Policy Details to cancel. Click-testing proved 74% selected Make a change vs. 2% for Policy Details, so we placed cancellation inside policy changes.
• Scannable Documents Area: Stripped repetitive brand names from document labels, improved versioning logic so users always found their latest certificate, and helped drive a ~20% reduction in in-account Virtual Assistant queries and 36%–100% uplifts in renewal click-through.

From "Contact Us" to Progressive Support

Legacy "Contact Us" pages were organised around internal business channels and phone numbers, priming customers to call even when they could self-serve faster online.

• Reframing the Core Question: Shifted from "How do you want to contact us?" to "What do you need help with?"—organising the architecture around customer intent (claims, policy changes, documents, renewals).
• 4-Stage Progressive Hierarchy: (1) Identify customer task → (2) Route directly to self-service (App, Online Account, Motor Claims Hub) → (3) Offer digital assistance (Virtual Assistant, WhatsApp) → (4) Provide targeted telephone support.
• Outcome-Led CTAs & Value Copy: Replaced vague links like "Manage online" with concrete actions ("Make or track a car claim", "Update your policy", "Find and download your documents") and explained the benefit (no phone queues, instant documents).

Omnichannel Alignment, Vulnerability & SEO

• Fixing WhatsApp & Phone IVR: Resolved desktop QR-code journeys that dropped users into blank WhatsApp chats without context, and aligned web copy with phone IVR scripts to eliminate conflicting admin fee claims.
• Supporting Vulnerable Customers: Co-designed discoverable additional-support journeys with neurodiversity and vulnerability specialists—creating dedicated hubs for Insurance for Everyone, Money Worries, and Difficult Times.
• Protecting Search Visibility & Intent Tracking: Partnered with SEO pre-launch to retain organic visibility for "contact/claims number" searches, while capturing diagnostic intent data proving policy changes and general enquiries were the top remaining call drivers.

The Numeracy & Comprehension Problem

Half of UK working-age adults have primary-school numeracy levels. Independent Kantar trials showed that while 60–72% of customers believed they understood financial documents, actual comprehension was as low as 13–35%.

• 20+ Competing Numbers on Page 1: Phone numbers, 7-day call-centre hours, unspaced 10-digit policy numbers, page references, and currency competed for attention.
• Looks Like an Unpaid Bill: Repeating £555.93 four times across pseudo-invoice tables ("Your premium" vs. "Your payment") created anxiety over whether action was needed.
• Channel Conflict: Placing phone numbers and opening hours in the top-left reading zone actively encouraged avoidable support calls.

The Plain Numbers Solution

Using the Communication Intent Framework and the three Plain Numbers Principles (Numbers Themselves, Numbers in Context, and How We Think to support System 2 slow thinking), I redesigned the pack:

• Stripped Distracting Digits & Chunked IDs: Removed phone numbers and opening hours in favour of Churchill.com/help, and chunked the policy number into 8050 899 213.
• Narrative Duration & Payment Reassurance: Replaced four tables and IPT jargon with: "Your Churchill Plus home insurance will start on 24 July 2024 and end on 23 July 2025. You've already paid the total cost of £555.93."
• Fee-Free Self-Service Nudge: Replaced 7 sub-bullets of dense warnings with a clear prompt to make changes "with no admin fee by using the Churchill app or by signing in to your online account."

Scale of the Problem & Collaborative Leadership

Fairer Finance's baseline assessment gave the booklet a "Fair" jargon score, flagging 29 sentences over the 29-word cap and heavy repetition of complex terms: "liability" (38x), "representative" (30x), "possessions" (26x), "premium" (22x), and "sum" (19x).

Rather than passing Word drafts between siloed teams, I established and led regular cross-functional working sessions with Legal, Underwriting, Product, Design, and CX. Together in the room, we triaged legal risk, reviewed Fairer Finance feedback live, and agreed sign-off decisions at pace.

Three-Tier Jargon Strategy

• 1. Language We Could Safely Replace: Swapped formal words where no legal distinction existed ("identifies" → "confirms"; "appointed representative" → "legal representative"; "overseas travel" → "travel away from home").
• 2. Language Needing Contextual Precision: Added plain-English parameters where brevity caused ambiguity (e.g., adding "It doesn't matter how long they are staying" to the paying guest definition).
• 3. Protected Legal Terms (In-Section Primers): Terms like "liability" (38x) could not be removed safely. Instead of hiding definitions in the back glossary, I placed plain-English explanations at the very start of the relevant sections—persuading Fairer Finance to rerun their checker and discount supported terms.