Innovative Client Journeys Critical to Successful Dutch Pension System Transition

Delta Capita’s Felix van Enst, Wouter Pijl, and Matthieu Peters highlight the necessity for interactive high-touch communication with participants if organisations wish to use this transition as an opportunity for growth.

Customer-centric communication is key

Although final details of the new system still need to be determined, it’s clear that the whole transition will take a significant amount of time, in terms of years of preparation for IT and process changes, whilst having a significant impact on the way pension funds and pension administrators operate.

This transition will present a unique ‘make or break’ opportunity for, focusing on more involvement from and interaction with participants. Excellent customer journeys should inform participants of changes and enable them to make calculations for contributions and benefit predictions. Additionally, the customers should easily be able to tap into an organisation’s call center or other customer support options.

Without a robust, customer-centric communication system in place, it will be impossible to manage expectations and retain clients.

Interactive communication provides a seamless experience

Whether a participant starts their journey in ‘low-touch’ channels like client portals on the website with possibly chatbots or in ‘high-touch’ channels like a call agent, the interaction should have a seamless omnichannel functionality.

Considering opening hours , a participant’s question or request needs to be handled quickly and efficiently. Low-touch interactions need to focus on simple questions, and high-touch experiences should be reserved for complex matters.  

In high-touch situations, an agent and participant should be able to view documents or websites together, enable calculations on a shared screen, and even provide upload and approval capabilities by the client. This, of course, with the highest demands on security and identification and verification of the participant.

The new pension system is expected to offer more individual choices for situations regarding risk-setting or investment allocations. Although participants should be directed to the more efficient customer journeys as much as possible, the transition also requires high-touch interactions for the challenging or even emotional questions by participants.

Realising high-touch participant communication

For optimising client interaction, it is imperative to start building a strategy to capture client needs. As many resources will be directed at renewing the core of the pension systems, it’s critical to analyse the changes early on and determine cost-effective and easy-to-install solutions.

A platform for interactive client interaction should strive for efficient communication from a business perspective while maximising NPS and customer satisfaction. Once the transition period has passed, a new kind of relationship with your clients should be in place. Keeping your participants informed about their assets and providing value is the ultimate goal. A solid communication platform that includes high-touch opportunities, such as video calling with an agent and interactive document handling, will go a long way in ensuring the participant’s needs are met.

The future will not wait

Pension funds and their pension administrators should embrace the fact that participants are more likely to be seen as ‘customers’ with the change to the new pension system. The change will also lead to higher contact volumes on complex matters, where both low-touch and high-touch customer journeys need to be combined to satisfy client questions and efficiently prevent or resolve conflicts.  

By integrating cutting-edge technology for communicating on high-touch subjects in seamless customer journeys, one can effectively communicate and interact with participants to improve client engagement whilst improving operational performance. The pension transition will occur no matter what, but the opportunity lies in how your organisation will prepare for it.

Managing consultant Felix van Enst and head of Digital & Performance Wouter Pijl focus on improving the performance of pension fund administrators and insurers. Matthieu Peters is a junior consultant.

Delta Capita is not only a recognised leader in providing consulting and transformation expertise to the pension fund administrators, but it also provides solutions that can support an end-to-end seamless customer journey approach, providing high-touch communication where required.
Delta Capita’s Klarion aims to delight the customer whilst providing improved efficiencies and end-to-end digital customer journeys.

This article is written by Felix van Enst, Wouter Pijl, and Matthieu Peters.