From “Pay Premiums” to “Protect What Matters”: Rethinking a Life Insurance Product People Don’t “Use”
On a quiet Monday, the team at Haven LifeCo (the name is made up, but the story true) launched a refreshed dashboard for their term life policy. Shiny charts, clearer PDFs, one-click payments. The metrics…. stayed flat.
Two weeks later, Ana, the product lead, met a customer, Elena, a 38-year-old teacher with a mortgage and two kids.
“I’m glad I have the policy,” Elena said. “But I never open your app. What would I even do there?”
That sentence landed like a small earthquake. Unlike health or banking apps, life insurance isn’t naturally reinforced. The contract is brutally simple: buy → pay → (someday) your family gets money, if the policy is still in force.
Haven LifeCo didn’t have a “usage” problem. It had a job cadence problem. So the team reframed the work: What other jobs do our clients have that naturally link to life insurance, and how do we engage meaningfully around those, without turning a solemn promise into spam?
What follows is how they rebuilt the product around three principles: outcome-fit, ethical habit loops, and a frictionless consumption chain, tailored to a product you hope your customer never has to “use.”
Act I — Outcome-Fit for a Low-Frequency Product: Insure the Life, Not Just the Event
Ana wrote on the whiteboard: “When Elena says ‘we’re protected,’ what does today look like?”
Then the team mapped the customer’s job-to-be-done, still the classic flow, but reinterpreted for life planning, not claims:
Define → Locate → Prepare → Confirm → Execute → Monitor → Modify → Conclude
They harvested desired outcomes, meaning the metrics families use to judge if protection is real before anything bad happens:
- “Know if our coverage is enough for mortgage + childcare + education.”
- “Keep beneficiaries and documents current so money reaches the right people fast.”
- “Stay in force at the lowest cost (no accidental lapse).”
- “Make it easy for my spouse to find everything in one place if I’m gone.”
- “Adapt coverage as life changes (new child, new debt, better income).”
From dozens of outcomes, three scored highest on importance – satisfaction chart:
- Coverage adequacy clarity (Are we under/over-insured as life changes?).
- Beneficiary and document readiness (Are details current, discoverable, and legally usable?).
- Lapse prevention with dignity (Can we avoid missed payments without shame or hassle?).
They shipped one improvement per top outcome, such as Family Safety Net Score, a Digital Beneficiary Vault or Grace-With-Options. We will not discuss them in detail, as they still represent a competitive advantage for Haven LifeCo
Result? More logins weren’t the goal, relevance was. Interviews changed tone: “I finally know if we’re covered enough,” “My husband knows exactly where everything is.” That’s outcome-fit for life insurance: measurably reducing uncertainty, administrative risk, and future friction—today.
Act II — Ethical Habit Loops Without “Usage”: Build Rituals Around Life, Not the App
You don’t “use” life insurance weekly. But families do hit predictable rhythms and milestones. Haven designed a respectful Hook that wraps around life events, not dopamine:
Trigger → Action → Variable Reward → Investment
- Triggers considered were external such as tax season or child’s birthday, and internal such as coverage assessment.
- Actions were defined around the principle – 2 taps / 5 seconds to value.
- Variable reward (meaningful, not manipulative) was included from personal achievements in the app to small perks.
Act III — The Frictionless Consumption Chain: Loyalty Lives in the “Boring” Stuff
Even for life insurance, the post-purchase jobs are real:
Receive → Set up → Learn → Use (maintenance) → Maintain → Upgrade → Conclude
Haven walked this chain and removed sand from the gears with policy summary in human words, one tap premium holiday or annual life audits. With a ”jobs” mindset the team continued to develop the product and the experience around it, focusing on what is relevant to the customers.
This is a true story about how good customer understanding and strategic focus using jobs to be done, can transform even the most unattractive product into an experience.
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