Ecommerce Website Grows Customer Base

The client’s outdated informational website inadequately served customer needs and limited customer growth.

Homeowner Safety Valve’s redesigned ecommerce website allows customers to fulfill their buying journey online and provides business users with deeper analytics, cleaner data, and mechanisms to promote customer growth.

Our client, Homeowner Safety Valve Company, provides water and sewer line protection plans to over 100 communities across Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.

Homeowner Safety Valve’s outdated site, safetyvalveplans.com, was no longer serving its customer base. While prospects and customers could access information on the website, Homeowner Safety Valve’s primary means of soliciting, enrolling, and communicating with customers was through the mail. This analog process lacked convenience and created service option constraints. A lack of mobile-responsive design made the site challenging to read on a cellphone or tablet.

The site was also not serving its business team. Without lead capture or integrated marketing tools, the client had limited capability to grow its customer base or to communicate effectively with existing enrollees. The existing website was also difficult to update and manage, making change requests slow to process.

Our client needed a development team to transform their informational website into an ecommerce site that would support a self-service enrollment system for its insurance plans. They also sought to enhance marketing initiatives and customer insights through data collected in a connected CRM.

Homeowner Safety Valve selected Chateaux to redesign safetyvalveplans.com based on Chateaux’s award-winning website revamp for their affiliate, Aquarion Water Company, proven expertise building Sitefinity websites, and experience working with complex data.

Following an in-depth discovery phase, Chateaux chose three key systems, powered by Microsoft Azure, to create the new ecommerce solution:

• Sitefinity CMS: the content management system that runs the website
• HubSpot CRM: the customer relationship management system that receives data so customer service reps can manage information
• Authorize.net: the payment processor that stores customer payment and billing subscription information

Next, the digital transformation team focused on the site architecture and creative redesign of the website using Sitefinity Online Marketing Edition (v 13) in a multisite environment that shares infrastructure resources in the Microsoft Azure cloud. Chateaux’s digital transformation team designed a fresh, modernized look and feel, incorporating several templates so admins could create pages for new products or information in the future. Mobile-friendly design included more appealing graphics, sleek text, a revamped contact page, and simplified FAQ widget.

Chateaux then moved onto implementing interactive capabilities:

Eligibility Calculator—Enhanced customer tool and lead capture function

The previous eligibility calculator would take a user-inputted address and perform a database lookup to verify if the location fell within the Homeowner Safety Valve coverage area. If eligible, it would direct the user to a PDF enrollment form that they would need to print and mail. The client did not keep any inputted information from this inquiry step.

Now, inputted eligibility calculator data is part of a lead capture strategy:

Chateaux implemented the SmartyStreets API for more accurate address validation and also integrated HubSpot to better leverage this user action. After inputting their address, users now complete a series of questions to determine the plans that would work best for their needs. This creates a better customer experience by providing more accurate, customized insurance options and the capability to complete the buying journey directly on the site. Addresses that do not fall into a coverage zone are now captured as leads to inform growth strategy data.

In addition, by connecting the HubSpot Service Hub to the prospect record, addresses requiring inspection are easily flagged, which streamlines the service process thanks to a new ticketing workflow.

Enrollment UI and Account Management System– Modernizing CX

To bring the enrollment process online, Chateaux needed to fulfill multiple requirements, including custom UI development, payment party integration, CRM integration and configuration, search functionality implementation, and creation of user roles, permissions, and workflows. The new process also needed to serve existing clients and ensure all data collected was clean and usable (see Data Migration and Cleansing below for details). The new My Account System revamps the enrollment process, bringing all account activities online through the connected interplay of Sitefinity, Authorize.net, and HubSpot.

Within the My Account System, customers can view their plans, edit their profile, manage payment method options via Authorize.net, pay bills, review order history, and monitor their plan status, including expiry alerts. The self-service system also supports guest checkout, providing the option to enroll at a later date, if desired. This overall flexibility aims to improve the customer experience and eliminate the cost of mailing services and manual data entry systems.

Customer service reps can now also manage insurance claims right in HubSpot, which creates a ticket that customers can then view in their accounts. Customer service reps can assign contractors right in HubSpot, and contractors can submit the job information back into the system, bringing the entire process online.

Data Migration and Cleansing

During the import of existing customer data, Chateaux’s data management team discovered issues with the legacy data quality that created integration roadblocks.

Previously, the client manually processed registration and payments for all insurance coverage plans. They formerly stored all customer data in a loosely structured, backend-only database entry system custom-built for the client. Chateaux identified how this process created three primary contributors to inconsistent data: handwritten customer forms that could lead to customer-created input errors, since it was impossible to validate what the customer provided; indecipherable or inaccurately decoded handwriting could lead to errors by the representative; and data input and consistency errors not validated by the system.

Our data management team analyzed the legacy data and addressed inconsistencies before porting into the new system. To prevent future irregularities, data validation is now built in and standardized to limit bad data from being entered. This includes address validation using the SmartyStreets API and the use of choice-based questions versus free text in user forms.

Final Steps

Following the implementation of all components, the team administered final QA testing and bug fixes and analytics configuration. Chateaux then provided user training to the Homeowner Safety Valve team and deployed the revitalized safetyvalveplans.com.

Chateaux fully transformed safetyvalveplans.com into a robust ecommerce website.

The team rebuilt the Homeowner Safety Valve site using Sitefinity Online Marketing Edition (v 13) in the Microsoft Azure cloud environment. In addition to traditional UI/UX enhancements, the redesign also includes development of a new database and CMS managed through Sitefinity, integration of payment processor Authorize.NET, and a new customer-facing CRM through HubSpot. Chateaux ported existing customer data over to the new system, with data quality being verified for effective, seamless functionality.

Customers can now check plan eligibility, purchase protection plans, and maintain their accounts for sewer, water, and in-home plumbing lines on Homeowner Safety Valve’s redesigned ecommerce website. They also have the flexibility to select new monthly plans, and change, upgrade, or cancel their plans through their online account. Visibility into submitted claims is also now possible online.

Using the new integrated HubSpot CRM, the business can leverage migrated data from legacy systems, new customer information, and captured leads to better market and grow their business. The enhancements improve the quality of information received by the prospect and leverage the inputted data for the sales team. This system, along with the Sitefinity CMS, provides more intuitive administrative product control and management.

All components are interconnected using Azure services, including logic apps to trigger specific functions at specific times and APIs to synchronize information. Additionally, the Smarty Streets API now validates user addresses. And new reporting tools, Google Analytics and Telerik Reports, now offer robust web insight and custom SQL database reports.

Since the launch, almost 1000 customers have enrolled through the website, and hundreds more are registered and using their self-service accounts. In addition, over 500 customer leads have been captured to provide growth data.

Homeowner Safety Valve Company is a Connecticut-based insurance provider of water and sewer line protection plans. Established in 2002, the company serves 100+ communities across New England.