FEATURED CASE STUDY · AI × UX · 2025

Designing
ClaimFlow AI —
when minutes matter more than meetings.

How I redesigned a dealership warranty-claims workflow at Meridian Auto Group using Claude and Tekion's DMS API — turning a 2.4-hour paperwork slog into a 14-minute conversation the service advisor actually enjoys.

Role: Principal UX + AI Engineer Timeline: 11 weeks Team: 4 (me + 1 PM, 2 engineers) Status: Live with 80+ service advisors
14m
Avg. Processing
down from 2h 24m
12×
Faster Throughput
claims per advisor / day
94%
AI Recommendation Accuracy
vs. adjudicator final
$4.2M
Annual Savings
across 80 service advisors
Tekion DMS Integration
AI Pre-Authorization
Contract Coverage Analysis
Claude · Pega Constellation
Service Advisor UX
14-minute Claim
Tekion DMS Integration
AI Pre-Authorization
Contract Coverage Analysis
Claude · Pega Constellation
The Problem

Two and a half hours of paperwork.
Every. Single. Claim.

Service advisors at Meridian Auto Group's 40+ dealerships were spending more time typing repair-order numbers than fixing cars. And the customer was waiting in the lobby.
"It's 9:47 a.m. Mrs. Chen is sitting in the lobby with a coffee. Her Outback needs a master cylinder. I have her repair order, her warranty contract, three open browser tabs, and a callback from the adjuster scheduled for sometime today. I haven't started the actual claim yet."

Every claim was a paper chase: pull the repair order from the DMS, type 12 fields into a warranty portal, copy/paste part numbers, look up the contract's covered components, calculate the customer's deductible, submit, wait. Two-and-a-half hours of clicking and cross-referencing.

Then the adjuster might come back and say "that's not covered." The advisor re-opened the contract PDF, re-read the §5.2 language, and resubmitted. Mrs. Chen's coffee was cold.

Multiply this by 80 advisors × 6 claims a day × 40 dealerships. The math hurt.

Manual data entry

12+ fields re-typed from the repair order into the warranty portal — by hand.

2–24 hour wait

Claims sat in the adjuster's queue while the customer's car sat on the lift.

Coverage surprises

30% of claims came back denied for §-language the advisor didn't catch.

Costly re-work

Denied claims meant another hour of resubmissions per advisor per week.

Pricing drift

Labor hours and part markups drifted outside the negotiated matrix — nobody noticed.

Customer churn

Mrs. Chen left a 2-star review. Her next car wasn't a Subaru, and it wasn't ours.

Who's Affected

Three humans.
One broken process.

Claude helped synthesize 24 advisor interviews and 12 adjuster ride-alongs into three personas — validated, not invented.
Marcus, the Service Advisor
Lobby · 6 claims/day · 4 yrs tenure
"I'd rather be talking to the customer than typing the same VIN into the same form for the seventh time today."
Process claims fast so the customer leaves happy.
Don't get a claim denied for fine-print he missed.
Avoid the dreaded "rework" email from the adjuster.
Priya, the Adjudicator
Back office · 40 claims/day · 12 yrs tenure
"I'm not paid to re-type things. I'm paid to make judgment calls — but 80% of my day is reading and re-reading contract language to confirm what an AI could tell me in 3 seconds."
Make the right approval call without combing through 30 pages.
Catch overcharges before they cost the carrier money.
Get home at 5pm, not 7pm.
Mrs. Chen, the Customer
Lobby · Has plans at 11 · 8-yr Meridian customer
"I just want to know what's wrong with the car, what it costs, and when I'm getting it back. And maybe a refill on the coffee."
Out the door in under an hour for routine claims.
Clear answer on what's covered and what isn't.
No "we'll call you back tomorrow" surprises.
Discovery

I let Claude read 800 pages.
Then I asked the right question.

Traditional UX research would have taken 4 weeks. AI-augmented synthesis got me there in 6 days with sharper themes.
01

Stakeholder kickoff

3 dealership GMs, 2 claims execs, the Tekion integration lead. 90 minutes. Recorded.

02

24 advisor interviews

30 min each. Claude transcribed, tagged, and clustered themes into a ranked friction map.

03

12 adjuster ride-alongs

Observed actual claim adjudication. Found the "where is §5.2 again?" moment in 11 of 12.

04

Contract corpus analysis

Fed Claude 7 contract templates (800 pages). Asked: "What patterns predict denial?"

The Insight

70% of claim decisions are pattern-matching.

Most denials weren't judgment calls. They were the adjuster recognizing that "labor hours for line item X exceed the rate matrix for plan Y." A language task. A pattern-matching task. The exact thing modern LLMs are good at.

The remaining 30% — edge cases, ambiguous fault, customer disputes — would stay human. But the 70%? AI could handle it in seconds, leaving the adjuster to spend their judgment where judgment actually mattered.

800
Pages analyzed
36
Interviews / ride-alongs
6
Days, not weeks
Before / After

Same goal.
Wildly different velocity.

The "after" lane shows where AI made a decision so the human didn't have to.
Before · Manual
2h 24m total
Pull RO from DMS 8m
Re-type into warranty portal 22m
Look up contract §s 18m
Submit + wait 90m
Read denial / re-work 25m
Resubmit + close 21m
After · AI-Augmented
14m total
Tekion auto-pull 5s
RO → form fields 3s
Advisor confirms 4m
Pre-authorize analysis 45s
Adjudicator reviews 8m
Approve + close 1m
AI Decision Points

Three places where AI makes
a real decision.

Not "AI sprinkled on top." Each point replaced a specific manual task with a specific model decision — and ships its reasoning so humans can audit it.
DECISION POINT 01

Document → Data

The repair order arrives as a PDF (or a Tekion DMS hook fires). AI extracts the claim and pre-fills 12+ form fields.

Input
Repair order PDF / Tekion JSON
Decides
Field mapping + part classification
Output
{vin, jobs[], parts[], labor_hrs}
Why it's audit-friendly Each extracted field carries a citation back to the source line on the RO. Advisor can click any value to see where it came from.
22 minutes of typing → 3 seconds of confirmation.
DECISION POINT 02

Pre-Authorization

AI compares the submitted claim against the contract's covered components and the negotiated pricing matrix — per job — and recommends approve, adjust, or deny.

Input
Form data + contract §s + pricing matrix
Decides
Per-job verdict + recommended amount
Output
{verdict, $rec, reason}
Example reasoning "Master cylinder is a covered component under Brakes per Premium Care Plus §5.2. Submitted labor (2.1h) matches OEM standard; parts pricing within ±5% of negotiated matrix. Recommend approve."
18-minute contract dig → 45-second AI summary.
DECISION POINT 03

Pricing & Coverage Audit

AI flags overcharges, drifted labor rates, and uncovered exclusions before the claim reaches the adjudicator — so denials stop being a surprise.

Input
Per-job pricing + matrix + plan exclusions
Decides
Flag, adjust, or pass-through
Output
{flags[], adjustments[]}
Caught in production $312 brake-pad markup outside the ±5% pricing band. AI adjusted to negotiated rate and surfaced the delta in the UI — the advisor learned, the claim went through, the carrier saved the spread.
30% denial rate → 4%. Reword stopped being a verb.
Interactive Demo

Click through
an actual 14-minute claim.

Three screens. Real UI from the production app (data is mocked). Use the tabs or the "Next" button to advance.
CF
ClaimFlow AI
MR
Marcus R. · Service Advisor
Good morning, Marcus 👋
Wednesday, 9:42 AM · Meridian Auto Group · West Bay Service Bay 3
23
Open Claims
+3 today
7
Pending Review
~3m wait
12
Approved Today
+44% vs Tue
14m
Avg. Processing
−18m vs last wk
Recent claims
Customer VIN Plan Submitted Status
Chen, P. JF2GTACC1MH… Premium Care Plus $1,847 AI Analyzing
Hayes, T. 5YJ3E1EA4LF… Comprehensive Care $612 Approved
Velasquez, J. 1FTFW1ET5DK… Tire & Wheel $390 Adjudicator
CF
ClaimFlow AI
MR
Marcus R. · Service Advisor
New claim · Step 1 of 3
Customer: Chen, P. · VIN: JF2GTACC1MH123456 · Plan: Premium Care Plus
Drop the repair order here
PDF, PNG, JPG, or pull directly from Tekion DMS · 25 MB max
RO-2025-08471.pdf
312 KB · pulled from Tekion 3 seconds ago
Extracted
AI extracted 14 fields in 2.7s — VIN, customer, plan, 3 jobs, 7 parts, labor hours. Click any field on the next screen to see the source on the RO.
CF
ClaimFlow AI
MR
Marcus R. · Service Advisor
Pre-Authorization · Chen, P.
AI ran the analysis in 47 seconds. Two jobs approved, one adjusted, total reasoning below.
AI Recommendation
Submitted
$1,847.00
3 jobs, 7 parts
AI Recommended
$1,535.00
↓ $312 adjustment
AI Reasoning · Premium Care Plus §5.2
"Master cylinder + caliper replacement: covered. Labor (2.1h) matches OEM standard. Brake-pad parts pricing exceeds matrix by 5.4% — adjusted $312 to negotiated rate. Recommend approve at $1,535."
Per-job breakdown
Master cylinder replacement
Labor 2.1h · part #MC-1192 · covered §5.2
$612.00
Brake pads (front + rear)
Pricing exceeded matrix · AI adjusted to negotiated rate
$648.00 $960.00
Brake-system flush
Labor 0.6h · fluid covered · routine
$275.00
Step 1 of 3 · Service-Advisor Dashboard
UX Wins

The metrics
that moved.

90-day post-launch numbers from the production environment. Sampled across 80 service advisors, 40 dealerships, ~14,000 claims.
14m
avg processing time

From 2h 24m → 14m

The headline. Service advisors got 2 hours of their day back. Customers got their cars back the same morning.

12×
throughput per advisor

0.5 claims/hr → 6.4 claims/hr

Same advisor, same day, 12× the output. We didn't add headcount — we removed friction.

−87%
denial rate

30% denied → 4% denied

Coverage analysis caught the gaps up-front. Advisors stopped resubmitting claims they should never have submitted.

$4.2M
annual savings

Pricing alignment + labor reclaim

AI caught drifted labor hours and over-matrix parts pricing every shift. Multiplied by 14,000 claims, the math compounded fast.

+38
NPS shift

Customer satisfaction

NPS jumped 38 points in the first quarter. "I was out in 20 minutes" became the most-quoted Google review phrase.

94%
AI accuracy

vs. adjudicator final decision

Adjudicators agreed with the AI recommendation 94% of the time. The 6% they overrode? Those were the judgment calls — exactly where we want humans deciding.

Design System

Built on tokens.
Shipped with code.

Figma → tokens → CSS variables → React components. Designers and engineers shared one source of truth.

Color tokens

Sky / Primary
#40C5E9
Good
#1D8D4F
Warn
#B45309
Bad
#DF1C50
AI Reason
#9A7BFF
Ink
#1D1D1F
Ink-2
#6E6E73
BG
#F5F6F8

Component library

42 components, all token-driven. KPI cards, claim table rows, AI hero card, file-upload zone, per-job breakdown rows, stat badges, action bars. Each ships with a .theme-dark variant for after-hours triage.

Typography

Pre-Authorization
Space Grotesk · 700 · 30px
Per-job breakdown
Space Grotesk · 700 · 22px
Master cylinder replacement
Space Grotesk · 600 · 17px
Labor hours match OEM standard; parts pricing within ±5% of negotiated matrix. Recommend approve.
Inter · 400 · 14px
JF2GTACC1MH123456
JetBrains Mono · 500 · 13px

Accessibility

WCAG 2.2 AA across light and dark themes. AI-generated content always carries a aria-live="polite" announcement when it appears, so screen-reader users hear the reasoning at the same moment sighted users see it.

Outcome

What it looks like
when the work changes.

"I used to dread Mondays — three claims sitting in my queue from the weekend, two hours each. Now I clock in, the dashboard tells me what's pending, the AI's already done the reading, and I'm just confirming the calls. I got my Mondays back. Mrs. Chen got her car back at 10:30. Everybody wins."
MR
Marcus R.
Service Advisor · Meridian Auto · 4 years tenure
Tooling

The stack that shipped this.

Figma + Dev Mode Claude (Anthropic) Pega Constellation Tekion DMS API Vanilla JS + Web Components HTML5 / CSS3 CaseState (localStorage) WCAG 2.2 AA Usability Hub A/B via Optimizely
Want one of these?

Let's design the next 14-minute thing.

I build AI-augmented UX for teams who measure success in minutes saved, not slides shown. If you have a process that's eating your team alive, let's talk.