Why State Farm spinout HiRoad refreshed its user experience

About a year after its expansion into Arizona from Rhode Island, State Farm's UBI spinout HiRoad is refreshing its user experience.

The HiRoad mobile app is the "primary interface" through which policyholders interact with the company, says Steve Harris, VP of HiRoad. "We hadn't really updated it in a little bit, and so we took a pretty deep look at its design," he says.

HiRoad launched in 2017 in Rhode Island and expanded into Arizona in 2021. Those are still the only two states in which it operates, Harris says. Now that it's settled in its second state, the time was right to update the product based on feedback from more customers, he adds.

New features include a text chatbot for customer service, an emphasized safe-driving tips module, and clearer access to driving data and scoring – and how that translates to insurance premium savings.

The app now shows "all the time they've been with us and the aggregate amount they've saved over that lifespan," Harris says. "That's along with projected savings and percentage savings based on their dynamic driving over the last month."

Harris says that HiRoad has seen statistics indicating that accident severity is up in the post-pandemic era. That, coupled with high gas prices, highlights the importance of behavior-based insurance, he contends.

"Driving's becoming more expensive and HiRoad has a model where we can actively reward customers [for safer driving] with a lower monthly bill," he explains. "We're uniquely positioned for that kind of dynamic driving environment."

On the service side, however, Harris says the company is "quite excited" about the text chatbot. He says that customer preferences for service make it more valuable than a voice-based bot – while being easier to implement. 

"For our demographic, there's a lot of 'thumb action,'" Harris says. "Not as many people want to do voice vs. chat" for certain service applications, he says.

HiRoad leaned on internal development for these upgrades, Harris confirms. " We've got a great research and design team, and mobile development team. So it's all in house, and we work with those teams to do the research, to do the different design options and to get customer feedback."

HiRoad also launched a new marketing campaign recently based upon its value proposition of mindful driving. Working with Fred and Farid, a marketing firm based in Los Angeles, the "shopping cart" spots tie the mindful choices people make during the day to mindful choices behind the wheel.

"This brand spot highlights our commitment to our behavior-based model and showcases how our customers and the community around them benefit from taking the high road," Eric Dahl, a HiRoad VP, said in a statement announcing the campaign.