Keeping the customer journey and experience as a North Star

As a connected car data company focusing on the motor insurance sector, UK-based ThingCo is dedicated to developing next gen telematics built with the latest technology. But ensuring the best possible end user experience is the primary consideration to choose the right way forward.

“I think of myself as a techie, but I’m probably more of an insurance person who’s just good at tech rather than the other way round,” says Jonathon Valentine, the company’s CIO and co-founder. And it’s that combination of disciplines that’s enabled him to continuously build knowledge, especially as tech creation is gaining momentum.

“Gen AI and LLMs will probably transform us as a business and what we can do to data, so we’re absorbing data from third party sources,” he says. “We would never do that before, but we will if it’s going to help us become more intelligent in what we do because humans can only go so far, and models can only get you so far. But now these new models allow us to do a lot more. It’s very early days, though. We’re not experts. We’re pure admirers and users and we’re only just scratching the surface, but I’m excited to see what more is given to us.”

So the tech is only as good as it is understood, and how it can be best used to yield success.

“It’s good to see and it’s going to change the way we work and make our life easier, but I don’t think it’ll get rid of engineers or developers” he says. “I like to get involved in every department and what they’re doing, and if there’s a problem, help to solve it. That gives you the ability to understand operations and the back end of how things work and how to approach people.”

Also, Valentine and his team are constantly reviewing tickets because even though insurance companies aren’t ThingCo’s customers, they still want brands represented as well as possible.

“We look at what people are talking about, what’s there, and then we reflect on that and how we can improve,” he says. “So it’s always a cycle of learning what the customer wants, what their issue is; the fact there’s a wide screen about that person.”

Valentine, a top 10 CIO UK 2023 Award Winner, recently spoke with CIO’s Rennick about a strong work ethic, understanding the customer first, and best ways to turn emerging tech into value. Here are some edited excerpts of that conversation. Watch the full video below for more insights.

On the customer journey and experience: I think the end user is the most important person for us. If you think car insurance is legally needed as part of an insurance policy to prove you’re a good driver to get cheaper car insurance, you might get frustrated because it might not represent you accurately. So I don’t want to see an issue. I’ll go speak with the customer who did a ticket and learn so much. Others have their point of view on understanding, and by learning a lot, they become testers of your product. So my biggest endorsers are people who actually have the experiences of speaking with us and we understood. Then suddenly they’re testing out new features for us and coming up with ideas. Then we’re suddenly in a position where you can turn that negativity into a positive part of your business.

On effective partnerships: It’s not fair for someone to be threatened to have their insurance canceled for something that wasn’t their fault, that the data was invalid. And when we’re working with third parties, you need to. For me it’s important to hold third parties to account, to say this customer’s had a bad experience and you still have data that’s going to financially impact someone for years. Our suppliers also have to realize that we’re customer centric and it almost involves them in a journey, too. We start off as a B2B service provider, or like a vertical SaaS because it’s our device, hardware, and firmware, and we do everything all the way through the white label apps. It’s almost like we provide an entire solution out of the box and I wouldn’t do it any other way because we tried to in B2B first without talking to the customer and the job wasn’t done properly and the data wasn’t used properly, so it’s a bad experience for insurance companies and the end user. They’ve got the app and they’re the ones who are going to get cheaper or more expensive car insurance. So that’s where we took the decision to bring it in-house and do everything. The insurer gets a better experience and I can sleep at night knowing that data is being used properly.

On emerging technologies: It’s going to change everything at some level. We’ve got a lot of data and we’re trying to turn that into value, and that can be done without the need for machine learning models. I think sometimes you can jump to using AI when more value can be gained out of intelligent thinking and some common sense. But it does have its place. Insurance is a difficult one, though, because it’s a regulated market. And if your insurance premium is £1,000 and mine is £2,000, we should have the right to understand why premiums vary. No one wants to hear it’s because of some algorithm. That’s not fair on individuals. It can be helpful for counter fraud, claims, or things where you’re trying to find patterns. But we need to make sure we don’t use this to penalize individuals because people who pay for their car insurance monthly are deemed to be a higher rate than those who pay annually. And people who pay monthly tend to be less well off. So a model is going to look at that and it’s going to penalize those people. Regulations are going to be very interesting in this sector. I’m really excited to see where it goes.

On getting an early career start: I got involved building companies at a very young age. I started designing websites at 11 and commercially from 13. Unfortunately spending your teenage years at a computer, it made me dislike the industry. I never wanted to use it for GCSCs or A-levels. I wanted nothing to do with it. But like a boomerang, you end up going back to what you’re good at. I went to university like everyone does with no qualifications, purely off my portfolio, but left after a year for an opportunity to work for a new insurance company where they needed a ‘coming soon’ page for telematics motor insurance. No one had any idea what it was. So I met these mavericks and took a chance and left university at 19 to become the head of web development for Insure the Box, which went on to sell a million insurance policies in the UK before being bought by Amazon. That was a crazy way to learn about IT and technology leadership. When I saw these insurance leaders spend millions building this company from nothing to 400 people in a call center, I was extremely fortunate to sit on the fringes and just absorb and learn. That’s how I got into this. I was just fascinated. And now my blood is telematics, insurance, and technology.