Some years ago I went to a presentation by a serial inventor. Somebody in the crowd asked him "You've invented so many cool things - where does your inspiration come from?".
His answer has stayed with me to this day. "That's actually the easiest part! Just follow someone around for a couple of days and see what really annoys them. If you can build something to deal with those annoyances, you have a useful invention".
I was reminded of that this week as we demonstrated Sentro to a prospective customer.
The demo reminded me, as it does every time we talk to customers, that the better you are at solving an annoying customer problem, the more valued you are in their eyes.
A huge part of solving problems is knowing that the problems exist in the first place.
One of the big reasons we have focused Sentro on group insurance and benefits administration is to zero in on the unique problems that group insurers face.
Our team thinks about group administration all day every day. How can we make it easier for the administrator to set up a new plan? How can we let sales offer different benefits and customized pricing? How do we make it pain free for the HR team of the plan owner to update their team's information? How do we make it easy for a insured member to choose what they need, know what they are covered for, and get a claim processed when they need to?
It takes a lot of thought, empathy and skill to make something quite complex into an easy to use problem solver. By staying focused on group administration, we are building our expertise, and imagining new ways of doing things that can solve even more of our customer's problems.
Part of the genius of great design is making even very complicated things simple to approach and easy to use.
We still have a long way to go on our design journey at Sentro. Yet, when I get the privilege of demonstrating our solution to an audience who really know the group insurance game, I take a lot of pride in the great work that our team have already done.
We've created a platform that can solve so many different annoying problems for our customers. It's tons of fun getting to show some of that in a live demonstration.
Solving problems for our customers and their customers is now baked into the Sentro culture!