Spotlight on... FloowCoach

Spotlight on… FloowCoach Article written by Charlotte Pearson

The Floow’s Driver Coaching team work on FloowCoach, our telephone-based coaching programme, which combines our excellence in telematics monitoring and scoring with social science techniques to improve driver behaviour and reduce some of the 1.25 million accidents and deaths which occur on our roads every year.

Our highly trained behavioural coaches have been expertly trained to deliver FloowCoach to the bottom 10-20% of drivers as they represent an increased risk of making a claim during the lifetime of the policy.

Since launching in October 2015, we have worked with thousands of drivers to help them understand and improve their behaviour on the road. Our latest research shows that for every 100 drivers who complete FloowCoach, 13 accidents are avoided compared to standard feedback mechanisms.

At The Floow, we see FloowCoach as extremely important to help us to deliver on our mission to make mobility safer and smarter for everyone and provide further context to the insights delivered to our insurance clients, and their policyholders, by our scoring algorithm through journey scores and driver behaviour information presented through smartphone apps and our insurer management portal.

How FloowCoach Started and Where It Is Going

We spoke to Dr Lisa Dorn, Chief Education Officer at The Floow and Associate Professor of Driver Behaviour at Cranfield University, who developed FloowCoach to find out more about the origins of the programme and where she sees it going in the future.

How did you get involved with The Floow and building FloowCoach?

I first became involved with The Floow in 2012 when Aldo heard about my work to improve road safety and how to influence driver behaviour. I became a co-founder of the company and immediately started working with the UK’s largest personal motor insurer, Direct Line Group.

As part of our partnership with Direct Line Group, they expressed concerns about drivers on their books with the poorest scores. Based on our data, we knew that these drivers were significantly more likely to be involved in a crash and we collectively agreed to do something to keep these drivers as safe as possible. As Chief Education Officer, my role is to provide The Floow’s feedback, educational and driver behavioural content so Direct Line Group naturally turned to me to design an intervention to improve their scores.

“We can help drive change that will see telematics fully integrated within the UK motor market.”

Where did the idea for the programme come from?

As an academic working in driver behaviour since 1988, I have a good understanding of a range of behavioural interventions and how they should be structured and implemented for maximum effectiveness.

I started by deep diving into academic literature to design FloowCoach based on evidence. I found many studies showing that cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) has been successfully deployed to change driving behaviour based on changing driver perceptions and responses to traffic related problems. Coaching using CBT encourages drivers to reflect on their decisions and develop goals for safer responses.

It was also important to incorporate behaviour change techniques within FloowCoach as the active ingredients for influencing behaviour. During the review process, I found research showing that using the telephone as the mode for delivering coaching was proven to be effective, even for drivers who had committed traffic offences.

This evidence base helped me feel confident in our abilities to design and deliver FloowCoach to improve scores for high-risk drivers. Our analysis shows that for every 100 drivers in the lowestscoring decile who have completed FloowCoach, 13 accidents are avoided compared to standard feedback mechanisms.

Graduates also tend to continue improving incrementally after completing the programme and rarely revert to previous score levels based on our follow-up evidence. This is fantastic as it shows we have affected positive change in the way drivers think about their risk and keeping them safe beyond the programme.

How far has FloowCoach come in the last 4 years?

Since its launch, we’ve been delivering FloowCoach via a number of telephone-based coaching sessions delivered by highly-trained behavioural coaches. In that time, FloowCoach has grown from strength to strength with more insurers requesting this service for their policyholders every year.

Several behavioural coaches have now joined The Floow to cope with the increasing volume of drivers going through the programme. This year, we are excited that FloowCoach has been set up in the US for the first time as major US insurers are coming on board.

How do you see FloowCoach progressing in the future?

As part of our mission to make mobility safer and smarter for everyone, we are currently reviewing how we incorporate some of the key behaviour change techniques within our apps by taking learning points directly from FloowCoach.

We have the ability to investigate which levers within FloowCoach have the strongest influence on driver behaviour by analysing what impact they have on driver scores. We can then digitize these features within an app and make it available to all drivers.

The app has a more widespread impact on all drivers, not just the bottom decile, so all our clients and their policyholders can all benefit from our technology for safer, smarter driving.

The Perspective of Our Coaches

We spoke to Charlotte Alleway and Taryn Garrison, driver coaches at The Floow, based in the UK and the US respectively, to find out more about what they do, how they support our clients and what makes a good FloowCoach.

How do you support our clients - and their customers?

Charlotte: We support our clients by providing coaching over the phone to their customers with the aim of improving their driving scores. This is done by using behavioural change techniques to help influence behavioural change, to help improve road safety and prevent claims as well as providing good customer service.

Taryn: As a FloowCoach, I support our insurance clients and their customers by providing customers with telematics support. I monitor customer data and present it to them in a way they can understand to help them improve driving behaviours. Our main goal is to promote safe driving practices by encouraging a sense of awareness about a driver’s driving style with our customers.

Why do you love working for The Floow?

C: It's great to work for a company who is so passionate about what they do, as well as making sure that the team feels valued and important to its success.

T: I love that The Floow stays true to its mission with collaboration and effective communication between all teams extremely important. Although I am the newest member of the FloowCoach team, I have experienced our strong community firsthand and I am comfortable seeking guidance from anyone as everyone is motivated to teach what they know as well as eager to learn in new situations.

What has been your proudest moment since joining The Floow?

C: Exceeding our yearly target as a team before the year has even ended, my first year working for The Floow, which I'm pretty proud of!

T: I’ve only been at The Floow for about two months, so I’m admittedly still catching on, but I'm proud to have learned enough to be able to contribute to FloowCoach’s latest endeavours.

What does it take to make a good FloowCoach?

C:Good communication and listening skills so our coaching is carried out to a high standard allowing goals to be set at the end of each call.

T: So far, the training starts the process but the rest seems to come with experience and learning from different calls. I believe if you are committed to being of service to others then you can excel in this position. It takes motivation and putting goals in place to make the roads a safer place for everyone.

Working with Direct Line Group to Deliver FloowCoach to the Market

Direct Line Group worked extremely closely with The Floow’s team to implement the FloowCoach programme into their telematics insurance proposition and bring it to market as a beneficial addition for their customers.

The partnership was extremely collaborative which was fundamental to the development of the proposition and allowing it to become a viable commercial and CSR option for their business. The three areas where FloowCoach would be considered useful for Direct Line Group were:

• To help their policyholders understand their driving behaviour

• To improve customer loyalty and offer a great customer experience

• To support their CSR agenda aligning to young driver safety and saving lives

They launched FloowCoach on their DrivePlus brand in October 2015 and further extended the programme to include their other brands in 2017. Direct Line Group see FloowCoach as an opportunity to actively engage the highest risk drivers on their book (based on their scores) to help them improve their scores and driver risk profile.

Earlier this year, Annette Fox, Head of Telematics at Direct Line Group, commented, “Working in partnership with The Floow has allowed us both to gain great insights and offer something truly beneficial to our policyholders.

“We know that through data we will have a much better understanding of risk which will not only enable us to offer better premiums to young drivers, but we can help educate, inform and improve road safety overall. It is Direct Line Group’s ambition to be a leading telematics insurance provider and we are confident that working with The Floow, we can help drive change that will see telematics fully integrated within the UK motor market.”