Vodafone has overhauled its bereavement (death) reporting processes and begun engaging with a leading bereavement charity to improve its support for people who have lost a loved one.
After a thorough review, Vodafone identified many long- and short-term improvements that it felt were necessary to make – and has already implemented 35 of them. More will follow.
Acknowledging that the admin associated with a bereavement can be an additional and unwelcome cause of stress, Vodafone has teamed up with Life Ledger, a free service that enables families to cancel a deceased person’s accounts across a number of companies at the same time. It will be promoting their service on its website.
Streamlined reporting
Vodafone has had a specially trained Bereavement Team for some time, and the vast majority of calls (86%) to this team are answered within 20 seconds. But the company has now made it much easier for customers to find this Team’s contact details and report a bereavement.
Vodafone and bereavement: Everything you need to know
When there's a death in the family, admin is the last thing you want to think about, which is why Vodafone has a dedicated UK bereavement team in place to help you through the contract cancelling process.
Changes include:
- introducing a freephone number (0808 005 7450)
- extending the Team’s opening hours to Monday-Saturday, 8am to 8pm
- improving the website search functionality to make it easier to find the Bereavement Team
- improving the search facility of Vodafone’s TOBi chatbot
- improving visibility of the Bereavement Team page in web searches.
And to make the reporting process easier, Vodafone has extended the number of documents it accepts as proof that a customer has passed away, and the ways families can provide this evidence. For example, photos of documents via email are now allowable.
In addition, the company has added a bereavement section to its ‘How to cancel’ page on its website; produced a video explaining how to report a bereavement; and written an explanatory article on its News Centre website.
Vodafone is also ensuring that its website meets the AA standard of the World Wide Web Consortium’s web accessibility initiative.
Training
The majority of Vodafone’s 7,000 customer care colleagues have received updated training on how to manage calls about death and bereavement, with refresher courses now built in to the training schedule.
The aim is to treat everyone with compassion and respect, particularly at difficult times like this.
Unpaid bills
Coping with a bereavement in the family is emotionally draining enough without having to worry about sorting their unpaid bills. So Vodafone is introducing an automated system that will flag and prevent unpaid bills in bereavement cases being pursued in error.
The new system will be operational from early 2023. Until then, additional quality controls will prevent this happening.
The company will also use Credit Reference Agency deceased persons data to remove accounts from debt collection agency databases proactively rather than waiting to be informed.
Continual improvement
Ahmed Essam, Vodafone’s UK CEO, said: “We’re committed to treating all customers with respect and supporting them in difficult times.
“We have listened to concerns raised by our customers and have made significant improvements to our bereavement reporting processes as a result.
“And we look forward to working closely with bereavement charities and organisations to help us monitor the effect of the changes we’ve made and suggest further improvements where necessary.”
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