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challenge
Design a seamless, empathetic and personalized experience for members canceling or transferring memberships due to death, for the largest association in the U.S.
Solution
Award-winning CX improvement effort across more than two dozen departments to make membership transactions compassionate and effortless.
The Project
More than a million AARP members pass away every year. Their spouses benefit from transferring memberships and families want to reduce the pain of receiving mail in their deceased loved-one’s name.
AARP lacked easy-to-find, simple pathways for users to take this simple action.
As an AARP Experience Designer, Ellen worked with 75 employees spanning cross-functional teams to design an intentional, effortless experience that addressed this emotional customer frustration. Participating employees spanned departments including: Contact Center, Membership, Legal, IT, Web Strategy, Data Management and more. All learning how to view their piece of the project through a consumer lens.
Project Scope
Collected Voice of the Customer and Voice of the Employee insights
Unstructured customer feedback from surveys, social media, emails
Focus groups with customer service agents
Phone interviews with loved ones of deceased members
Identified operational and system constraints
Reviewed available metrics (baseline, launch and post-launch)
Assessed communications touch points across channels
Leveraged customer experience, innovation, and Lean Six Sigma tools
Built stakeholder and empathy maps and fishbone diagrams
Facilitated current and future-state, front-stage and back stage customer journey mapping
Held hypotheses testing, brainstorming and prioritization workshops
Pinpointed root causes of poor customer experience
Prototyped, tested and refined new experience tactics
Measured improvements across channels
Results
The project earned a 2017 Customer Experience Excellence Award from SAP/ Temkin Group, and led to a 50 percent reduction in repeat customer service calls and increase in digital self-service. The outpouring of appreciative customer feedback had significant uplift on employee enthusiasm and there was increased interest by loved ones in membership— an unintended positive result. Deliverables included:
Streamlined communications including a new website landing page, FAQ and a dedicated toll-free number
answered by agents specifically trained in compassionate caregiving needs.A revised customer process, tested in multiple channels on a regular basis.
Multichannel methods for notifying AARP easily (Call, Email, Chat, Social Media, Mail).
Development of new Online Community facilitated by a hospice social worker.
Follow-up letter or email confirming account closure, with grief resources.
Personalized condolence card.
