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Company Background

Lemonade, founded in 2015 and headquartered in New York City, is a digital insurance company that leverages AI and social impact to provide insurance in a transparent, customer-centric way. Serving customers across the United States and parts of Europe, Lemonade offers a range of insurance products, including car, homeowners, renters, pet, and life insurance. As a certified B-corp, the company is committed to combining technology with social impact, aiming to create an exceptional customer experience while giving back through its annual Giveback program, donating unused premiums to nonprofits selected by customers around the world.

The Challenge

As Lemonade experienced rapid growth, the company recognized the importance of maintaining consistent and accurate information across its expanding teams. The customer-facing teams responsible for handling inquiries and claims, and the Customer Learning and Development (L&D) team, in charge of training and knowledge management, saw an opportunity to enhance efficiency by adopting a more unified system.

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To support this growth, Lemonade sought a knowledge management solution that could adapt to the dynamic needs of its teams. In starting off with just shared docs and Slack conversations, these did not support them in scaling and delivering a source of truth for our teams. The company realized the potential for improvement in streamlining processes and fostering better collaboration across departments.

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The Lemonade L&D team emphasized the importance of transitioning to a more advanced knowledge management system, one that would be owned and managed with clear structure and purpose. By embracing this change, Lemonade aimed to empower its teams with the tools they needed to deliver exceptional service and maintain a high standard of efficiency.

The Solution

Lemonade selected Guru's AI-driven platform to centralize its knowledge management, integrating it seamlessly with their existing tools, including Slack and Zendesk. The goal was to make Guru the single source of truth for all teams, ensuring that accurate and up-to-date information was easily accessible. The team can review complex insurance policies and standard operating procedures (SOPs) in the Guru Extension over Zendesk, feeling confident knowing the knowledge is trustworthy and secure protecting company and customer information, to quickly find the information they need during customer interactions. Guru’s AI features, such as the AI-powered search and announcements, were key in helping Lemonade streamline knowledge sharing and reduce time spent searching for information.

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In addition to enhancing knowledge accessibility, Lemonade also partnered with Guru to train leadership in flagging significant changes and emergent needs via their internal request system. This approach empowered the customer-facing roles, who are most likely to notice inaccuracies, to flag issues as they arise, ensuring the system remains accurate and up-to-date.

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The impact of this solution was quickly felt across the team. As Anthony Manluccia, Training Lead, explained, “Now we’re using Guru AI Answers to help us address knowledge gaps… The Training Center highlights that missing knowledge for us based on questions the team asked. It’s become a part of our daily workflows.” This shift not only improved the efficiency of knowledge management but also empowered employees to find answers on their own, reducing their reliance on peers and supervisors. Moe Bonham, Sr. Manager of L&D, cited this empowerment as a main driver of agent satisfaction in their role.

The Approach

Because Lemonade’s L&D team built a strategic knowledge base with information for each of their product lines, they were able to easily implement AI search on top of their content. When they enabled AI search, their team naturally took to adopting the functionality without much coaching. They emphasized the importance of training their teams to use the AI search feature effectively. This included setting up guidelines on how to use the AI, such as training employees to thumbs up or thumbs down the AI's suggestions, which helped improve the accuracy of search results over time. 

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This approach allowed them to refine the AI's performance and make adjustments as they scaled their AI strategy across the customer organization.

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Cierra Kriese, Director of Quality and Training, highlighted the benefits of this centralized approach led by L&D: “The centralization of knowledge and creating a clear knowledge request workflow has helped clarify who owns what. It’s now part of our day-to-day.”

The Outcome

Guru has had a measurable impact on ramp time and key onboarding metrics, leading to significant customer benefits. Anthony shared that the use of Guru has enabled new specialists to meet their ramp-up targets more effectively, directly improving efficiency and customer satisfaction. By consolidating information in their LMS, embedding Guru cards into the course curriculum, and training new hires to leverage Guru from day one, Lemonade was able to reduce their training schedule by a full week.

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Making Guru the primary reference tool for new hires has ensured that agents can independently handle customer inquiries faster and more accurately. This has reduced the need for extended training periods and supervisor intervention, enabling new agents to reach full productivity sooner. As a result, customers experience shorter wait times, faster interactions, and quicker responses to their questions, ultimately enhancing the customer experience.

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The improved ramp time and onboarding efficiency have not only boosted the overall performance of Lemonade’s customer-facing teams but have also allowed the L&D team to focus more on continuous improvement and strategic initiatives. The combination of a centralized knowledge base and AI-driven search has enabled Lemonade to maintain a high standard of service across its growing multi-product, multi-national business—ensuring that customer needs are met swiftly and effectively at every touchpoint.