John Hancock begins a new legacy with digital experiences.

Buying life insurance used to mean meeting with an insurance agent, filling out a lengthy paper application, then waiting up to 40 days for approval. John Hancock wanted to simplify that experience for its customers. In 2014, the financial services company turned to Salesforce to create more modern, digital experiences.

Partnering with Salesforce has helped John Hancock improve customer experiences. Today, prospective life insurance customers can go to John Hancock’s online portal to quickly get a quote, submit an application, and sign it. Long-term care insurance customers can now submit service claims online instead of by fax.

Find out how a Salesforce architect helped John Hancock’s team eliminate a major pain point.

Rethinking customer experiences and established business practices is a difficult task, especially for a brand with a 155-year legacy. “We’re prepared to take some risks along the way, innovate, and understand the path that the customer wants us to follow,” said Len van Greuning, VP, Technology Officer.

Before John Hancock implemented Salesforce, the company used several legacy systems, some of which were duplicative and nearing end-of-life. However, the systems didn’t provide the CRM capabilities John Hancock needed or provide a single view of customers.

The company decided to implement Salesforce and decommission the legacy systems. Today, John Hancock uses Sales Cloud and Service Cloud to give employees information about customers in one place. The company also uses Salesforce Shield, a feature of the Lightning Platform, to encrypt personally identifiable information (PII). John Hancock recently began using Salesforce Connect, another Platform feature, to connect Salesforce with a legacy data store, minimizing the need to replicate data across different systems.

In 2016, the company worked with a program architect from Success Cloud, which offers expertise and resources to help customers achieve their goals with Salesforce faster. “We really wanted to have heavily experienced professionals embedded into our teams and really work side by side with us,” van Greuning said.

The architect helped John Hancock’s team innovate faster, speeding up technology releases needed to support online applications such as the life insurance application portal. “In the past, deploying a new version of this application could be a four-to-six-week process. Having the Salesforce team there, we’re now able to do it twice a week,” van Greuning said.

Working with a Salesforce architect helped John Hancock launch its new online life insurance application portal, which allows customers to get a life insurance quote and submit an application quickly online. The new online life insurance portal has also improved experiences for John Hancock employees. Previously, processing a life insurance application required 140 manual steps. Today, all but a handful of steps are automated, which gives employees more time to focus on sales and customer support.

John Hancock also uses Salesforce to improve the experiences for long-term care customers. The company launched a long-term care portal with Salesforce Communities, which allows customers to upload images of receipts for service claims instead of faxing them.

One of the most significant changes John Hancock has experienced is gaining a single view of the customer. “Getting a single view of the customer has been very transformative for us,” van Greuning said.

In the past, the company managed customer information in 15 to 20 different locations. Today, John Hancock integrates customer information into Salesforce, which allows it to manage all of its customer data on a single platform. That means service agents no longer need to swivel between applications. They can access all of the information they need in Service Cloud to better serve John Hancock customers.

Len van Greuning’s advice for starting on your journey with Salesforce.

John Hancock’s journey with Salesforce isn’t over yet. The company plans to continue automating processes and exploring what’s possible with the platform. Connecting with the larger Salesforce community has helped John Hancock solve challenges and answer questions quickly, van Greuning said. The company’s architect reached out to his network of Salesforce experts to help John Hancock find answers. John Hancock’s Salesforce admins have expanded their knowledge with Trailhead online learning modules.

And for those looking to follow in John Hancock’s footsteps, Len van Greuning had one thing left to say: “My single point of advice to anybody starting on the journey is understanding all of the resources that Salesforce can offer you and tap into those, whether it’s an architect, professional services, Premier Support, or even the learnings of the Trailblazer community.”