Death by Digital

Dealing with a bereavement using online services

A recent death in my family made me switch to being a user in managing a significant life event. I had a number of joys and frustrations in dealing with this so I thought, in the spirit of working in the open, I’d capture them as user research to share with others. I don’t pretend to be unique in dealing with any of this, but it may be useful.

No one wants to be a consumer of these sorts of services, and everyone will cope with things in their own way. As a digital native I was keen to use online services as far as I could to enable me to take actions when they suited me and when I was in the right state of mind. But I was also keen to talk to someone when I needed more advice.

It’s worth saying that I had the benefit of having Power of Attorney in place, and having cleared my father’s old house when he moved into care, so all the paperwork I could possibly need was readily on hand at my home.

I’m adding scores out of ten to each section to give a subjective assessment as I go as a measure of how well I think these served me as a user.

GOV.UK: What to do when someone dies (8/10)

This was an early reference point in the process for me.

I found it useful to have all related information on the actions I needed to take assembled into a step-by-step guide. This service pattern continues to show its effectiveness in providing a collection of information as well as individual guides that can be found and viewed on their own as well as making you aware of the wider context they operate in.

Initially, I didn’t feel I needed to know that a funeral needed to be arranged (that’s obvious isn’t it?), but looking more closely at the information there were some things in there I could see would be really helpful to some people. It was nice to see reference to Humanist options (like we have opted for).

The section on registering a death catered for overseas deaths, and the need to register in the UK, but not to registering in the authority that the person died in.

I found that there wasn’t enough information about the role of an Executor. Having to read up elsewhere and try and explain this to the elderly relative that had been named in the role was more difficult than I’d have liked.

I felt the Tell Us Once information was a bit lengthy, and I found myself scrolling down through it to get to the call to action button. As this is all explained by the registrar (in person) who has to provide the information to commence the service maybe this could have been shorter.

But overall a really good basis for informing you of the steps to take.

Oxfordshire County Council: informing about a death in care (2/10)

My father had been in a care home for the last two years, supported financially by Oxfordshire County Council, so there was a need to contact them quickly in order to cease payments and cancel any direct debits for his financial contribution.

I couldn’t find any information on their website on how to do this. It may be that the care home themselves take care of this, but I would have been reassured to know that. Also, what happens to his personal information now he has died?

In the end I resorted to using a general contact form to send information I thought would be needed to cancel his care and not take future payments. This information was a guess on my part, and it would have been far better to have been guided through what was needed.

Since making the report (a full week ago) I’ve not had any contact from the County Council, so I don’t know if any of this is being dealt with. It’s common feedback from users that being left in the dark on processing cases is frustrating and leads to further contact, and it feels like this is a good example of that.

I felt pretty dissatisfied with the extra work I needed to do which has led to an unsatisfactory conclusion.

Lloyds Bank: Bereavement service (10/10)

We don’t always associate (older, traditional) banks with great digital services, but I was delighted with Lloyds. Their online bereavement information gave me just enough to get me going, and provided a really easy to use notification form for starting the process.

Importantly, Lloyds understand the importance of human contact in times like this. I called the service for advice and was dealt with compassionately and patiently. I ended up talking to the agent about how supported I felt, and she told me how proud she was about the service they provide.

When I was involved in the Local Digital discovery project on chatbots, a finding from our user research that stuck with me was that in circumstances where information was complicated, or emotions run high, talking to someone is really important for users. It feels like Lloyds have embraced this as a key part of their service, and while many aspects can be handled online they are upfront about the need to speak on the phone at some point too.

Despite the need for some organisations to require a physical document (see insurance companies below), Lloyds were happy to receive a scanned version of the death certificate with some accompanying metadata around the certificate number, registrar name etc. This was really welcomed as it’s never clear just how many copies of a paper death certificate you might need.

Oxfordshire County Council: Registering a Death (6/10)

It became apparent early on that many of the actions I needed to take relied on having a death certificate. The GOV.UK guidance puts this up front, emphasising the need to report within 5 days.

The complication in my case was that I live 100 miles away from the place the death needed to be registered, and it has to be done in person. This wasn’t always the case (as our funeral director pointed out) as during COVID the service was delivered by telephone. I question if there is an overriding need for this in all circumstances.

In order to be able to register a death remotely I was faced with finding out if this was possible locally, with the two local authorities agreeing and sharing information back and forth (all by email). All this while still trying to achieve the 5 day deadline to report the death. Honestly, I could have done with this bit being less officious.

I really wanted to speak to someone in person about making an appointment given my circumstances, but the ‘channel shift’ mentality has taken root in Oxfordshire, and it took two of us to hunt around their website to find a contact phone number for registration services (it was their contact centre number).

By now I’d chosen instead to register in person in Oxfordshire as I needed to sweep up some other jobs there too. I was advised to not go for an appointment in Oxford as I may not get one soon given its popularity as a registration venue. How this squares with reporting a death within 5 days I wasn’t clear.

The online appointment system for registration of a death was pretty good and had been well designed. I needed to provide more information than I thought, and I suspect this was more to help with the registration data than it was to verify identify (so a bit like self-scanning items at a supermarket checkout). I was easily able to choosea venue 9 miles outside Oxford and was able to get a date that worked for me and within the deadline.

The registration appointment itself is where the human part came in again and I met with a really nice registrar (Jess) who let us in early and dealt with everything quickly and efficiently. The Tell Us Once service was explained really well, and had I not been able to complete this online would have been done with me there and then.

Information about the death certification was sent automatically to our funeral director, so that was one less thing to worry about (and useful as I’d already met with the funeral director earlier that day)

Although I’d been ‘forced’ to do this in person I’m glad I did. I just wish it had been easier to find out about remote registration (and be reassured it was possible) and able to speak to someone more easily when I felt I needed to.

GOV.UK Tell Us Once (10/10)

Armed with my information on the service from the Registrar I was able to choose a time to go online and complete this process.

I was really relieved knowing that a large range of notifications would now happen without me needing to do a thing; state pension, civil service pension, council tax, driving licence (not that the last two were ones that I needed to use). The design of the service was great and easy to use. Definitely one that the team at GDS should be proud of.

I guess I was sceptical about the service as I’d seen efforts at councils to achieve the same thing, which largely resulted in internal emails flying around behind the scenes. However, as a user it did feel like ‘doing the hard thing to make it easy’ was working for me, and the back-office processes didn’t matter so long as the end result was good.

I also saw a really nice pattern for an address lookup that allows for entering an address manually too. I’d not come across this in other GOV.UK services and it’s now circulating at Placecube HQ for further consideration. Tricky given the need for UPRN to be used for so many location-based services, but there may be scope for it.

Life assurance companies (Cooperative, Aviva) (3/10)

I had to deal with notifying two insurance companies my father had taken out life assurance policies with.

In both cases, the company and the policies had been bought out by another insurer, so I needed to work out the year the policy was taken out in order to select the right company and telephone number. It felt like I had to do most of the work here.

Similarly, in both cases the insurance companies had online forms, but these had drawbacks that stopped me using them. Firstly, they require the postal address used to take out the policy (neither of the policies has the address used, so I can’t be sure of this). Secondly, both require physical copies of the death certificate (you need to look hard to find this out) so an online form will just be followed up with something I need to post.

In the case of Aviva, an online form is used to request a paper form. I mean, seriously?

I ended up requesting email versions of the forms so that I can complete these on behalf of the named Executor (another relative) to minimise the burden on her. As someone that doesn’t use a computer at all she can only deal with paper.

I had low expectations going in to these encounters which were met completely.

BMW Pensions (5/10)

BMW appear to have outsourced their pensions to a third party (Aon) to manage, and to their credit this is made clear in their pension statements.

Usefully, they included a contact email address, so I have used this to inform them of the death, include any reference numbers I could find and attach a scanned copy of the death certificate.

Time will tell if this is all the information they need. They scored relatively well as I dealt with this one quickly thanks to the email contact being easily found.

Canada Pension Plan (0/10)

Oh dear…

My father had a brief civil service career in Canada after a short-lived emigration. This gave rise to a pension from Canada Pension Plan.

If I ever think that UK digital services are not up to scratch I just need to look overseas at how other countries compare. I’ve always thought of government in Canada as being fairly switched on (but have never actually used any of their online services) but I was soon disabused of this notion.

I had real difficulties in trying to find any information on reporting a bereavement on the Government of Canada website, while there was plenty about claiming a pension. In the end I had to post a letter to them, after searching for the right office to contact (this had to be done on the basis of finding the first letter of his old Canadian address zip code). No sign of any email address that could be used to save me the £2.20 in postage.

(on a side note, I’m throwing in a 10/10 for Royal Mail for their Collection Service that meant I didn’t have to leave the house to post this letter — the postage was paid online, my local postman collected the letter and brought the label to stick to it, and I was able to track its delivery. Brilliant service)

Conclusions

A bereavement is a life event that all of us will have to deal with at some point in our lives. Given the heightened emotions likely to accompany this, and the likelihood that the numerous actions required will not be well known to many people, there is a surprising lack of user-centred service design to make this easy to deal with.

This is particularly surprising for life assurance providers who are in the business of dealing with deaths on a daily basis. If a financial organisation like Lloyds Bank can manage this (to the point of their own staff being proud of the service they provide) then I do wonder what is holding them back but their own inertia.

Unsurprisingly, GOV.UK scored highly. I may be biased here, but their commitment to user needs, making things simple and writing content well shows why.

Another thought that occurred to me was the way (all of us) deal with someone that is going through a bereavement. We all take extra time to listen, to be empathetic and to be proactive in proving support. Imagine if all transactions were carried out like this — wouldn’t life be easier? Not to mention death.