RESPECT Online has recently undergone an extensive change and is now presented to clients in a modern design that responds to the latest technological trends using high security standards. We talked to Ing. Michal Truxa, Operations and Technical Director, Vice-Chairman of the Board of RESPECT.
How long was the new RESPECT Online developed and what was the main impetus for this major change?
The project of the new RESPECT Online customer portal has been in the works for about 2 years. It took several months to analyse the functional and system requirements, then it was necessary to select a supplier with the appropriate competence for the development of this type of application, and finally it was the actual implementation phase of the project that took the most time.
The initial impulse was that we wanted to provide our clients with a modern and user-friendly application that would respond to technological trends in web application development, be fully accessible from mobile devices and offer new types of content and other functional elements that the original application did not have. Over the course of several years of operation of the original app, various ideas were generated internally on how to improve the portal, and we also gathered valuable input from our clients. Web applications and the technologies used are moving forward very quickly, users demand an easy to understand and comfortable user experience, so we had to respond in this regard as well. All of this resulted in our decision to embark on this project around mid-2018.
It is a very modern tool that reflects current user trends. The application is fully responsive and can be run seamlessly on PC, MAC and mobile devices with Android or iOS operating systems (Apple iPhone, iPad, Android devices). Will the portal continue to evolve in this regard to maintain this user experience for clients, and can we look forward to more technical conveniences in the future?
Of course, we are counting on the fact that the development of the app will not stop at the current point. Already now, shortly after the portal has gone live, we have further ideas on how to extend the portal's functionality and improve the app's user interface so that users have a better user experience and the portal has more added value for them. We also expect further suggestions for improvements to come from users themselves. The feedback from our customers has always been a very valuable source of information for us, as well as a motivation to improve and move things forward. A number of improvements have also been made to the technical background of the application that are not visible to the average user at first glance. If the client is interested, we support two-factor authentication when users log in using SMS, we log all user activity and are therefore able to track, among other things, which sections of the portal are the most popular in terms of frequency of visits or, on the contrary, "uninteresting" for clients. The application has passed an independent security audit and meets all security requirements for this type of applications working with client data.
RESPECT Online now offers the possibility to administer vehicle insurance and create reports or order their regular sending. Are there any plans to add further services to this platform in the future?
We definitely want to expand the portal's capabilities in these functional areas as well. Gradually, we will add more reports that are meaningful to our clients. We would like to focus even more on analytical data and reports that will enable clients to uncover the causes of higher claims and implement measures to prevent claims.
In the area of vehicle insurance management, I can imagine that some clients might find it interesting, for example, to be able to use our application to keep their own records of vehicles that are not insured through our company (e.g. leased vehicles), including technical data about the vehicle, MOT date, expiration date of the first aid kit, insurance validity, etc.
We are also considering the use of the portal as a basic communication platform to address common client requests and needs. Already today, a client can report a new claim, add documents to an already reported claim or report a change in the vehicle registration number via the portal, but the use of this web platform can be much broader. But of course a lot depends on how our clients would like this idea. We haven't done a survey yet. I would like to keep more to myself, if I may, so that we don't reveal everything and so that users have something to look forward to. :-)
Watch our video.We show you how the new portal works and where you can find all the information about insurance policies.