Leadership that puts people first

Maintaining the personal touch

Great customer service doesn’t happen by accident. It comes from having the right people, the right tools and a clear sense of what good looks like. For us, good customer service is about making pensions easier for members. When people understand the purpose behind what they do, they can make better decisions for customers.

The way customers want to interact with their pension is changing. At the same time the pension industry is dealing with extensive regulatory changes, while consolidation and growth means there are more members to support. Added to that, changes in working patterns and expectations of retirement mean that the help members need is often more personalised and involved.

For leaders, the challenge is to evolve with changing expectations without losing the personal touch. So what does good leadership look like when you’re trying to improve customer service at scale in a moving landscape?

For us, it comes down to three things: giving our people clarity, giving them the freedom to do their best work and listening to what customers and colleagues are telling us.

Giving employees clarity

Technology can quickly change the way work is done, but changing a workplace culture takes longer. That’s why successful change needs to involve employees right from the start. When introducing new technology, changing processes or finding new ways to support customers, our teams need to understand not just what is changing, but why. And they need to know that their experience and expertise still matters.

At Smart Pension, our technology removes barriers, takes away routine administration and makes everyday pension tasks easier. Around 90% of pension tasks can now be completed in the app or online, and we’re aiming to reach 95% in 2027. This is increasingly what our members expect – they want to be able to make simple changes to their pension, or check their savings balance, quickly and easily at a time that suits them.

But this doesn’t mean taking people out of customer service. It means being clearer about where technology can help and where humans make the biggest difference. 

Give experts the freedom to do their best work

When technology does the routine work, our people get to do what they do best.  Our customer service team hold professional qualifications including PMI Pension Essentials, CII Certificates and CII R04 – they also have a wealth of expertise, often built up over years. And they are trained to recognise when someone is vulnerable or needs additional support, including customers experiencing bereavement, serious illness or difficulty using technology.

In short, they are a precious resource. By removing time spent on changing addresses or other routine pension administration tasks, technology gives our teams the freedom to spend more time using their uniquely human skills. 

Technology doesn’t remove the need for expertise. It gives us more opportunity to use it where it matters most. It allows our people to talk in detail about drawdown strategy, or to explain with empathy what happens to a pension when someone has just died. In our Retirement Support team the average call is picked up in seconds and lasts 25 minutes. Our excellent Trustpilot reviews show how much our members value this approach. 

Listen and learn 

Creating a culture where people can speak up and leaders are prepared to listen and act is essential. And all customer service starts with listening. Not just to what people say, but to what they are trying to say. A customer might reach out with a question about how much they’ve saved, when what they really want to know is when they can afford to retire. A colleague might raise a recurring customer issue when what they’re really telling you is that a process isn’t working as it should. 

At Smart Pension, every customer interaction gives us information. Where are people getting stuck? What questions keep coming up? Which journeys create unnecessary contact? One conversation is an anecdote. Thousands of conversations can become a pattern. And patterns give us something to act on.

If customers keep asking the same question, it may not be a training issue. It could be a design issue. A form, letter or digital journey might simply not be clear enough. Data and machine learning are valuable tools in helping us to identify patterns and act on them. But you can’t beat the insight provided by an engaged customer service team.

Read how listening at scale has allowed us to make our customer service faster, simpler and more human. 

Creating the conditions for good service

Leaders don’t need to have every answer. But they do need to create the conditions for their teams to deliver good customer service.

That means being clear about your purpose and communicating it well to your customer service teams. It means investing in your people and appreciating their expertise. It means improving the digital experience and removing unnecessary pension administration. It means listening and continuously improving. And it means making sure there is always a human on hand when someone needs to talk something through. 

Because good customer service isn’t about choosing between people and technology. It’s about bringing the two together in a way that works better for members.

That’s why, at Smart Pension, we’ve put such emphasis on building a customer service culture that’s straightforward, mindful, attentive, relevant and together. These aren’t just nice words for customers. They’re principles for how we approach each customer interaction. Read more about how we are building an excellent customer service culture.

About Smart Pension

Launched in 2015, Smart Pension now exceeds £10bn in Assets Under Management (AUM) and serves 2 million members and 100,000 employers. It is powered by Keystone, Smart’s global savings and investments technology platform.

Aquiline, Barclays, Chrysalis Investments, DWS Group, Fidelity InternationalStrategic Ventures, J.P. Morgan, MUFG and Natixis Investment Managers are all investors in Smart Pension.