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For most people in their working years, life insurance is a cheap hedge against the worst thing that could possibly happen. Yet most people do not have enough insurance to protect their families in the event of a major life change like death. The problem is entirely human: it’s really challenging to confront our own mortality, and that means we don’t engage in the kind of planning that we should.
Our client, one of the most trusted insurance brands in the United States, asked us to help them to solve this problem. Our ultimate goal was to launch a new insurance product as well as the service that agents use to present and customize that product to their customers. To get there, we knew we’d have to dig pretty deeply into people’s attitudes towards end-of-life planning.
The Grand Studio team conducted dozens of research sessions in several cities across the US. We set up a mobile research facility in rented living rooms so as to create a context that would make it as comfortable as possible to talk candidly about death and money. Over the course of our research, we began to introduce possible product concepts to gather feedback as to whether our potential product was genuinely meeting user need. Ultimately, we prototyped the entire sales service experience by mocking up an initial presentation between the agent (a member of the research team) and our research subjects, the potential customers.
By the end of the project, we had gathered the data we needed to define the technical features of our product (things like terms, payout options, and policy type) as well as the experience points (things like sales scripts, ancillary tools, and leave-behinds).
Key QuestionsWhy don’t target users currently engage in end-of-life planning?
What can we do to make it easier to confront?
Which of the potential product features really matter?
How can we strip away all of the features that add confusion but not value?
How can we optimize the sales interaction?
How do we make it easy for insurance agents to present the product to customers in a way that educates but does not confuse or mislead?
The Project Numbers
Exceeding launch goals
Our product launched nationally ten months after our project kickoff, far faster than what is normal for this highly-complex, highly-regulated industry.
Deliverables
- Value prop definition
- Feature definition
- Customer personas and journeys
- Service map for customer / agent interaction
- Sample sales scripts
- Sample content for consumer website
