Creating an inclusive customer and colleague experience with Scottish Widows

Leading UK pension provider Scottish Widows (part of Lloyds Banking Group) has been helping people save for the future for over 200 years. They stay at the forefront of the industry with their purpose of Helping Britain Prosper, and by continuously evaluating the best way to support their customers and colleagues.

Investing in FinTech, like Appointedd, has allowed Scottish Widows to stay ahead of evolving needs and trends, and experiment and implement change at a competitive rate.

The challenge

Scottish Widows had the challenge of booking customer pension appointments due to the existing process being inundated with manual tasks. This was largely a result of legacy technology that couldn’t cope with the scale and demand, as well as this process crossing the realms of multiple teams and stakeholders. For example, prior to using Appointedd, it took the tactical planning team 2-3 days a week to plan out appointments for the following week. Now it only takes them on average 5 minutes a day.

Appointedd worked in close collaboration to ensure the new proposition would remove any element of human or technical error, resulting in a more self-servable solution for customers, and creating the capacity for colleagues to solely focus on delivering value.

“Appointedd has been an excellent FinTech partner working with us at pace to understand the business need and co-create a great new customer experience”

Senior Product Owner

“This is the best appointment booking system I have used in 25 years”

Inbound Team Member

“Absolutely loving it. Since it came in, due to being real-time I’ve been able to finish on time”

Pension Consultant

Strategic value to Scottish Widows of using Appointedd

Encouraging digital engagement

The existing process required the customer to call the telephone line should they wish to cancel or reschedule their appointment. By giving customers a greater ability to self-serve they’re not left frustrated and the operation is much more efficient for both sides. The result is that 70% of Scottish Widows Retirement Operations customers would prefer to self-serve and book their own appointment rather than have Scottish Widows do it on their behalf.

Personalised journey

Whether it’s a confirmation email, reminder SMS, or rescheduling confirmation, every Scottish Widows customer automatically receives a branded and personalised notification. The previous process required an hour and a half of manually sending SMS reminders to customers every day. Since implementing Appointedd, Scottish Widows has received zero complaints for instances of overbooking, compared to the average of fifteen per week prior to Appointedd.

Business critical engagement data

Understanding evolving customer engagement preferences, and supply vs demand has always been important for the propositions and operations teams. But given the regulatory compliance requirements of the Consumer Duty Act, it is increasingly important to have access to this data in real-time so that it can be shared with internal systems and stakeholders. Scottish Widows have made use of Appointedd’s extensive reporting capabilities to do just that in an automated and seamless way.