Lack of Closure Experience in pensions

Pensions are having to evolve with working practices. 80 years ago people would have a job for life. That job providing a pension that would grow as you aged. As few people moved jobs, tracking people would only need to be done by the employer.

Jobs for life are a rare thing now and in the UK with each new employer, you will receive a new pension through the companies pension provider. The department for work and pensions believe we now have on average 11 employers in our life time. That means 11 different pension pots with different service providers. Each keeping contact with the individual over potentially decades - an issue that we rarely apply ourselves to as designers.

A recent study by Age Concern, a UK charity, suggests 1 in 4 of these pots goes missing through lack of contact. Literally lost in time. This is an eye watering amount of money that could well make the difference between a cold winter or a comfortable one for many pensioners.

Keeping a service alive for decades is a complicated business and requires considerable thought for the Closure Experience - in this case tracking users over years and delivering their payout.

Lack of Closure in digital

Consider for a moment the first time you created an identifier online for yourself. For me, it was the first time I signed up with a Internet Service Provider. It was so long ago, I had to supply my details by fax. 20 years later, I am still signing up for digital services or products, thankfully not with a fax. 

A culture of endless 'Sign-Up'

Considering how many services people causally sign up too its surprising how few are consciously ended. Many of these unclosed digital relationships are still present on databases, return results to search engines, but may be long forgotten by the user. 

This reveals a dangerous crack in the users perception of control of their content. 

An extreme, but a very real situation, is when people pass away. Facebook introduced memorial pages in 2009 for departed loved ones and Google has recently taken action with their Inactive Account Manager. Although a welcomed initiative for Closure Experiences it has taken a surprising amount of time to recognize that people die and there being a consequence of that.

Professor Mayer-Schönberger, in his book Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age (Princeton, 2009), challenges this issue by championing our right to be forgotten online. Stating why it is important to not have access to everything from our past with the damaging potential of a compromising Facebook picture, or outdated information taken as fact. He proposes ‘expiration dates on information as a solution.

This feels overly simplistic and systematic, when the reason for not using an account can be diverse and personal. It isnt that we need to enforce service providers to forget/delete our digital content at a scheduled time, but to provide users with clearer Closure experiences that acknowledge when information should be forgotten or left for following generations.

Our changing attitudes towards Death

Death

Death has changed its focus in the last 300 hundred years. In the past the elderly, ill or injured would lay on their death bed surrounded by family and friends tending to their comfort. Mutterings of the dying person would be heavy with emotion and philosophy. The experience for people in attendance was intense and conclusive, providing an opportunity to reflect and justify ones life. Economic changes brought about by the industrial revolution changed many ways of life including death. In the US 32 % of all deaths occur in hospitals, around another 20% occur in nursing homes and with people living further away from loved ones its more likely you will be dying alone. 

What was a potent and poetic example of Closure in our life has become efficient and meaningless - bordering on denial.These changes in Closure are echoed across other parts of life, some having further reaching consequences.


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Here are a few quotes that outline our changing attitude towards Death - from an intimate and personal experience in Medieval times, too a cold, functional and lonely experience in modern western cultures.


Medieval Death
Death was a ritual organized by the dying person himself, who presided over it and knew its protocol. Should he forget or cheat, it was up to those present, the doctor or the priest, to recall him to a routine which was both Christian and customary.
Western Attitudes toward death from the Middle Ages to the present. Page11-12


It was essential that parents, friends, and neighbours be present. Children were brought in; until the eighteenth century no portrayal ot a deathbed scene failed to include children. And to think of how carefully people today keep children away from anything having to do with death!
Western Attitudes toward death from the Middle Ages to the present. Page 12


Modern Death
Death in the hospital is no longer the occasion of a ritual ceremony, over which the dying person presides amidst his assembled relatives and friends. Death is a technical phenomenon obtained by a cessation of care, a cessation determined in a more or less avowed way by a decision of the doctor and the hospital team. Indeed, in the majority of cases the dying person has already lost consciousness. Death has been dissected, cut to bits by a series of little steps, which finally makes it impossible to know which step was the real death, the one in which consciousness was lost, or the one in which breathing stopped. All these little silent deaths have replaced and erased the great dramatic act of death, and no one any longer has the strength or patience to wait over a period of weeks for a moment which has lost a part of its meaning.
Western Attitudes toward death from the Middle Ages to the present. Page 88-89

Thus mourning is no longer a necessary period imposed by society; it has become a morbid state which must be treated, shortened, erased by the “doctor of grief.”
Western Attitudes toward death from the Middle Ages to the present. Page 100

7 Day Switching; enforced closure in banking

This month sees the launch of a new government requirement forcing banks to complete an account switch in 7 days. The initiative is in response to an Independent Commission on Banking report that was published in 2011 which contained the shocking statistic that people change their bank accounts, on average, only every 26 years.

The move highlights the service industries failure to provide successful closure experiences as part of the customer lifecycle. Banking has many examples of not adequately considering closure; mis-selling of mortgages and over exposure to risk are classic examples of putting short term gains over long term service delivery.

Currently, changing bank accounts can take up to 30 days. Transferring direct debits and other regular payments seems to be an overly difficult process. Banks seem to give little acknowledgement to the fact that people’s lives change and that they might want to change their bank account.

There are plenty of examples of new businesses being created out of an industry’s poor ability to deal with switching accounts. The energy industry has seen this - comparison companies, that just deal with switching, have been created on the back of it. The mobile industry has  seen similar developments.

Making it easier for people to switch is good for customers. It opens up markets and brings competition that, in turn, fosters innovation. Making the cycle of life and death of a customer relationship healthy and active. People don’t feel trapped in to one customer relationship for an extended period of time. They should feel confident that moving an account will be about getting increased benefits - not an awful drawn out experience that they will avoid for another 26 years. 

Closure is an important part of business health. We can’t just focus on acquisition and minimal churn of customers. We have to broaden our design approach to actively consider closure experiences in services in a positive manner. 

It’s hard to sell this approach to clients - basically telling them that we should make it easy for customers to leave. The alternative, however, is that we create services that customers are trapped in, which is a defensive stance for any business. 

Creating a healthy service experience, that customers can end as easily as they start, is a confident and open business that relies on its quality of service, not a service trap without end.

Transaction models as an indicator of good closure experiences

Closure Experiences are often locked to the moment of transaction in some way. It can reveal a great deal about the ownership of - and influence upon - the customer relationship as well as to provide an interesting insight into a person’s work satisfaction and aspects of psychology. All of which influences how the customer feels when a service comes to an end - the closure experience.

We can break down the majority of customer engagements into 4 broad transaction types:

• Payment after delivery: restaurants, plumbers, hairdressers, taxis
• Payment before delivery: tickets, flights, trains.
• Scheduled payment: gym, car insurance, utility companies. 
• Synchronous: commissioned services, digitised services, PAYG.

Reflecting on the details of these raises some interesting questions and insights. 

Payment after delivery – This holds the possibility of empowering the customer, as potentially they can negotiate the price on the quality of the service delivered. These transactions often have higher customer contact, potentially a single individual being the executor of the service, such as a waiter. The payment may act almost like a reward, attended by the possibility of a gratuity.

Incidentally, people in these types of jobs have highest job satisfaction, according to a City and Guilds survey hairdressers and plumbers come up tops. This suggests a strong link between job satisfaction and having the transaction at the end of the service delivery. The interpretation of quality or satisfaction with the work becomes a discussion to be resolved with the customer. From this conversation service providers have to accept criticism and ultimately correct anything that goes wrong. The result is pride and belief in their work through constant feedback and improvement. 
http://www.cityandguilds.com/About-Us/Broadsheet-News/November-2012/Careers-Happiness-Index-2012

Payment before delivery - Limits the ability of the customer to negotiate if a service has been poor and therefore leaves little opportunity for the service provider to get feedback and improve. Often seen in entertainment services, travel services and education. The customer is paying for access to the service. The opportunity to have an frank discussion with the service provider is rare in these transactions. The customers would usually have to make effort to have their complaints heard, possibly through some formal systematic way that further distances the service from the customer. 

The band Radiohead disrupted the model of payment with their album Rainbows by asking customers to pay what they thought was appropriate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Rainbows It would have been interesting to extend this to their tour tickets and have the entertainment industry’s transaction model challenged with a more open alternative. 

Scheduled Payment - The customer considers the service a basic / hygiene level need and wants to give minimum attention to the transaction. Often used by utility companies and banks, who encourage their customers to pay via direct debit. Due to the low customer engagement with this type of service, providers often become complacent with the customer relationship. This is evident in the press coverage these companies get for their customer service,some of which suggest a shocking level of customer contempt in the industry. This shouldn’t be surprising, given the distance from the customer. The style of transaction is essentially automated and leaves little opportunity to review quality with the customer. 

Synchronous - Digitising services has increased the use of synchronous transaction. For example, ‘pay-as-you-go’ services are digitised and use of them are increasing in many sectors. RFID cards are facilitating more synchronous transactions. Its a very transparent form of transaction and one that respects both provider and customer equally; creating a healthy end to the service.

Although the ‘Scheduled’ and ‘Payment before delivery’ models offer benefits in some situations, they are becoming increasingly outdated as a payment model in the drive for improved and more transparent customer relationships. 

Considering our definition of Closure in the context of service provision only the ‘Payment-After-Delivery’ and ‘Synchronous’ transactions models have the potential to fulfill the intention of a good Closure Experience. 

"The satisfactory conclusion to a product or service relationship. Each party feeling satisfied with the completed transaction; it being a fair, just conclusion without consequence."

Service providers should look to changing their transaction models to improve their Closure Experiences and, in turn, their relationship with their customers.

The limited language of Closure

The language that accompanies many of our existing closure experiences is guilt inducing, legal or dull. A simple letter informs the customer that a service has ended. It is not full of reflection or inspiration that may help fuel a future service relationship between the provider and the customer. The end of the service, letter concedes defeat and suggests a focus on the next victim to the service.

The language of product endings is little more than a wagging finger. A contradiction of the purchase experience that suggests no guilt for spending money or getting fat or damaging yourself, the closure experience for many products suggest where to place the used item. No responsibility is expected beyond location of the used packaging.

Legal T&Cs
The business side of a Closure experience is detailed and crystal clear. If you speak ‘legal’, then T&Cs clearly describe a cold blooded ending to the service relationship. If you are a regular user they come across as baffling.

Some companies have attempted to simplify the T&Cs for the user and in turn highlighting potential endings of the relationship. The terms and conditions from sites like 500px.com/termsare fighting the users corner for Closure experience by making the legal agreement accessible to the user.

Cadence in music as inspiration for Closure

In classical music the term Cadence refers to the resolution that brings a phrase or a piece of music to an end. There are different forms of Cadence in music, half cadence, full cadence, plagal cadence.

Different forms of Cadence represent a stronger or more complete closure in classical musical pieces. We may consider these in two different stages, where one represents the coming of the end and one represents the end.

In Indian classical music the end of a piece is determined solely by the feelings of the performer. A piece may even last all evening. Although Indian audiences are quite familiar with this format of music, western audiences and venues find it hard to adjust, as our music is less flexible with time.

The way Indian classical music continues until the performer feels the piece is emotionally finished can represent to a service provider the ideal customer experience. 

Many service providers would like their service relationships to go on forever. Unfortunately it also represents problems for an unwilling audience.

Timed closure, which we experience in the form of a contract in services, is present in western music with the ‘score’. This times a piece of music so we can set a schedule and plan a concert around it. Although we often experience modern music as a product in the form of a CD, music has traditionally been a service and therefore offers many commonalities.

Musicians have refined techniques to bring closure to their music. These are well established, tried and tested methods. As a form of art, music has not been blinkered by the need of money. In contrast, business has not considered the issue of a satisfactory closure in the offering.

Music has considered the closure experience of its offering, how it happens and when. Services are often compared to performances yet how many offer satisfactory endings?