Transforming the CX bereavement journey

Many companies have worked hard to create fantastic processes for dealing with the death of a customer. These processes are run by well trained, sympathetic staff and genuinely help the bereaved at a difficult time. But there is an issue that all these processes, no matter how good they are, have in common.

The issue that these processes share is their individuality, each bereavement journey has been created in isolation. Each company has, quite understandably, looked at the journey the bereaved take with them as an entire journey and created a process to make it as easy as possible. The problem with this approach is that it will never be the entire journey for the bereaved, it will only ever be a single part of a much bigger journey.

This bigger journey will involve a whole series of these single journeys as they deal with their loved one’s telephone, mobile phone, gas, water, electricity, bank, building society, mortgage, pension, broadband, internet, car insurance, house insurance, holiday insurance, pet insurance, credit cards, store cards, membership cards, loans, standing orders, TV license, etc.  As our lives continue to be transformed digitally this list continues to grow and even if every company delivers an amazing bereavement process the bereaved will still have to deal with them individually. However, alternatives do exist.

It is the public sector that has created the groundwork for the commercial sector to follow, with the government’s Tell Us Once service. The service allows the bereaved to notify a whole raft of departments and organisations of a death, in a matter of minutes, with a reference number supplied by the local registrar when the death is registered. Now this idea is being transferred into the commercial world with the arrival of platforms like Equinity’s financial services focused Death Notification Service and the sector agnostic Life Ledger.

The idea of these new services is to simplify the process of sending death notifications for the bereaved, to create a single point from which they can notify all of the companies connected to their deceased loved one. To combine all the individual company touchpoints into one clear, connected process and remove the need for the families to repeat the same process over and over again. But it isn’t just the bereaved families that benefit from connecting the dots.

For business, partnering with these new services has the potential to transform their interaction with the bereaved into a frictionless process that saves time and resource for both parties. Companies simply define what they need to know and where they would like the information sent. The service packages and delivers what is needed. The bereaved have a simpler and less stressful experience and contact centre teams are fully informed, can check, take the required action, and respond confidently in moments.