Sometimes you spend so much time with your colleagues they start to feel like family, but for Senior Digital Licensed Insurance Specialist Jennifer K., some of her coworkers actually are her family.
We recently chatted with Jennifer to hear more about why she loves working with her mom and sister at Metromile, how she’s been able to grow her own family while working from home, and why she’s a Metromile customer herself.
How did you, your sister, and your mom all end up working at Metromile together?
It all started with my sister Erika, who joined Metromile as an underwriting assistant in August of 2018. After a few months of hearing about how much she was enjoying her time at Metromile, I decided to join the Metromile team in May of the next year. Not too long after, my mom, Christina, started at Metromile as a Senior Digital Licensed Insurance Specialist like me.
What’s it like to work with your family at Metromile?
I love that I get to work with my mom and sister! Being together at Metromile definitely allows all the three of us to keep in better contact than we would otherwise, especially as we are all working remotely – my mom and sister are both based in Arizona while I’m in Washington. My mom is on the digital team with me so I get to work fairly often with her and stay pretty in tune with what each other is working on.
As for Erika, she is on the underwriting team which comes in really handy whenever I have questions on underwriting cases. Aside from that, Erika and I are both moms so sometimes we just send pictures of our kids back and forth to each other over Slack! It’s honestly easier to get ahold of her during work hours so it’s great that we get to chat so often and stay in touch throughout our days.
Can you tell us a bit more about your work as a Senior Digital Licensed Insurance Specialist?
I mostly work with helping customers through our new chat feature and occasionally through email – though our chat function is becoming the most popular way for customers to reach out. I also help create various Q&A resources for our digital and phone teams so we can quickly respond and help customers when they contact us. Our chat feature is definitely my main focus but I tend to have my hands in a lot of pots and enjoy helping out different teams.
Recently, I helped build an app simulator for our customer experience team to better understand the customer experience when using our Metromile app. Now, our teams can actually see how things are done on the customer side – improving the experience for both our customers and our team.
How has your experience been working from home?
WFH has been so amazing as it started right after I came back from maternity leave for my older daughter. I’ve been so lucky to be around for all her firsts at home – that’s such a blessing that a lot of parents don’t get. I had my second daughter during the pandemic and once again got to be there for her first crawl and steps and even during potty training.
I wouldn’t have been able to share any of those experiences with my daughters if I had to go into an office. But, there are definitely challenges of working from home and being a mother to two young kids. My husband and I have had to find our balance over the past two years but we’ve found our groove and it’s been fairly successful.
You’re also a Metromile customer, tell us about that!
My husband and I have been Metromile customers since October of 2020. It’s the perfect fit for us as one of our cars doesn’t get driven very often – we save over $140 a year with Metromile! The Metromile app is super user-friendly and it’s so easy to make all of my changes online.
Since I work with our Metromile drivers on the daily, it’s incredibly valuable to be one myself. I’m able to really understand the customer experience which helps me easily assist them with whatever issue or concern they come to us with.
As a customer, I’ve also been able to see how much money pay-per-mile insurance has saved me and my family – I love being able to support such a great service and share my experience with friends, family, and customers.