Self-Serve Billing, Delivered

Co-operators clients had no way to manage their billing through the self-serve portal. Viewing payment details, updating banking information, managing payment methods — all of it required a call to the contact centre. For a digital servicing platform meant to reduce that friction, billing was a conspicuous gap.

My Role

UX Design Director. I ensured the designer partnered with the researcher early in discovery before any solutions were on the table and coached the team through how to frame and present their recommendations to stakeholders.

What Research Told Us

The discovery phase surfaced three findings that shaped the design direction.

Mobile users were significantly slower to find the billing section than desktop users — nearly twice as long — pointing to a navigation and findability problem that needed to be solved before we could layer in self-serve functionality.

When vehicle and address information was surfaced contextually within the billing view, 92% of participants responded positively. Seeing their car, their house, and their payment details together in one place created a sense of personalization and confidence that a policy number alone couldn't.

Users also expected to see a consolidated total monthly payment, not amounts split across separate billing accounts. That's how they thought about their insurance — one monthly number — and the design needed to reflect that mental model.

The Recommendation

Rather than presenting a single solution, I introduced a Good/Better/Best framework to give stakeholders a clear view of the tradeoffs between scope, investment, and impact. This made the conversation about priorities rather than approval, and gave the team a structured way to advocate for the right level of ambition.

Stakeholders chose Better for the first release — a phased approach that would build the foundation before layering in full self-serve capability.

What Shipped

The rollout launched in three phases: a billing dashboard view first, followed by self-serve banking and payment information management, then payment method changes and draw date control. Each phase built on the last.

Outcome

Within weeks of launch the portal was handling 100+ self-serve transactions per day — over 3,000 since launch — directly reducing contact centre volume. Stakeholder feedback was positive across the board.