Covid-19 update
At the start of the pandemic in 2020, most people would not have expected to still be in its grip nearly 18 months later. It has led to significant changes in the way Aviva’s customer service teams operate.
In March last year, there were only 100 operational staff with an Aviva laptop and so to mobilise the operations teams for homeworking was a significant task. In total, Aviva very quickly built and installed almost 4,000 laptops – 1,600 of those were for customer service staff. The number of telephone ports for staff to take customer calls while working from home was also increased from 340 to 4,000 and call centres remained open from the very start of the pandemic. This mobilisation had to be undertaken urgently and securely and was successful.
In the early stages of lockdown, Aviva staff not in customer-facing roles were asked not to access the Aviva IT servers during normal working hours to ensure that priority access was given to customer service teams. This was a customer-focused prioritisation of IT capacity which allowed them to maintain a high level of customer service during the early stages of lockdown. Increased capacity to servers was delivered so all staff could return to normal working by 30th March within 3 weeks of the guidance to work from home.
It is not realistic to expect service levels to have been unaffected by the pandemic especially in the early period as, like many of you, staff were working from home and juggling schooling, childcare and other needs with their jobs. As a result, telephone waiting times were longer and responding to requests for information also took longer than normal.
We have also seen evidence that the average length of calls increased significantly with customers spending 50% longer speaking to an Aviva call handler than in 2019. That could be due to an increase in complexity of the call but could equally be that people were just happy to have somebody to talk to.
Source – Aviva
Aviva did, however, prioritise their laptop rollout and support for staff dealing with payments out, such as death claims, retirement claims or transfers out. Clearly, as the period of the pandemic has lengthened, Aviva staff have adjusted to the new working environment allowing service levels to recover and they are now closer to pre pandemic levels.
We have looked at a direct comparison between the key servicing tasks and financial transactions at the end of 2020 with those at the end of 2019. While there was an impact, we do not believe it was significant in the circumstances. You can see the comparison of pre- and post-pandemic servicing levels in the charts shown.
Some of the delays experienced throughout the year could be attributed to external factors such as delays being experienced by other providers who were being impacted by the pandemic.
E2E times are based on the number of days a task takes to complete from the date the request is received from the customer to the date the work is completed.
In the early stages of the pandemic, Aviva saw the number of complaints reduce from normal levels. As customers felt the impact on service levels and investment performance the volume of complaints increased and reached a peak in November. Complaint volumes increased above the numbers received in 2019, the root cause of which could be attributed to the effects of the pandemic and so we do understand the reason for the increase.
During the pandemic, where complaint volumes did increase, Aviva allocated sufficient resource to resolve them in a timely manner as can be seen in the graph.
“Pipeline” refers to the number of unresolved complaints.
Despite the dip in service levels, Aviva has seen customer satisfaction scores increase except in some areas serviced by third parties where the deterioration in service was more severe. In 2020 “Net Promoter Scores”, which is a way of measuring customer satisfaction, were on average 8 points higher than in 2019 reflecting the improvements in customer service. Aviva has now introduced “Always Available” which means call handlers can drop administrative tasks and always be ready to take a call, which will lead to a reduction in calls being abandoned. We expect call waiting times to improve further in 2021.
During the last year the Aviva operations leaders updated us on their measures to deal with both the working arrangements and increased administration demands. At times there was a marked increase in contact from members beyond normal levels and, like many organisations, Aviva focused on the well-being of staff through these strains.
For those of you in older products, your pension is serviced by third party outsourcers who were not able to mobilise their teams as quickly as Aviva would have liked. As a result, there was a deterioration in service levels and call handling for much of 2020. We are pleased to note that this has now returned to acceptable standards.
Aviva has continued their programme of automation to make things easier for you. They have delivered a number of improvements to speed up your experience in certain key areas including transferring money out, retirement claims, and replacing BACS payments with CHAPS to speed up payments.
Other developments include the use of DocuSign which allows you to complete forms electronically and Aviva has been moving significant amounts of communications online to make around 80% of these paperless. They now operate Live Chat across their online platforms, so you don’t need to pick up the telephone to get in touch. They also use speech analytics to help direct customers to the right person by recognising key words and phrases and the tone of the customer’s voice.
Further developments are planned throughout 2021, all aimed at helping to improve your dealings with Aviva and we will report further on these in our next annual report.
In our previous reports, we have highlighted the valuable work which Aviva does to support their vulnerable customers. During the pandemic, Aviva has seen a significant increase in the number of customers identified as possibly being vulnerable. Staff have received specific training on Covid-19, domestic abuse and mental health awareness. Over 4,000 customer-facing staff have completed vulnerable customer training. In the early days of the pandemic, relevant communications were designed which included a dedicated website providing guidance and support.
The FCA published a consultation paper in 2020 setting out their expectations of how firms protect vulnerable customers. As a result, Aviva mobilised a team dedicated to ensuring that there were no gaps in their processes. They also created a tool to monitor and record instances of vulnerability and are updating systems to ensure that, where a customer has more than one policy or product with Aviva, that indicators are set on all policies to highlight any potential vulnerability.
The FCA published further guidance early in 2021 which further extend the requirements on providers to consider vulnerable customers in their product design. We will continue to monitor how Aviva adapts to these new rules but are confident that their current approach is strong.
We are pleased that Aviva undertakes annual AAF reporting which tests the robustness of their controls around how they administer their workplace pensions. Last year, we were unable to report on the findings for 2019 as the report hadn’t been issued before our annual report was issued. We have now been given access to both the 2019 and 2020 reports covering the period to 31st December 2020. The 2019 report noted a failure in one of the controls relating to unit reconciliations – the process for ensuring that the correct number of units were held on Aviva’s systems to balance with the assets held under management. The error was due to a gap in the process following a handover of responsibilities from an external supplier to Aviva’s finance team. We are pleased to note that Aviva immediately undertook a full reconciliation to cover the period and all reconciliations balanced. The report for last year identified a few minor exceptions which Aviva has addressed by further strengthening their controls within the impacted areas. We do not believe that the exceptions give rise to any major concerns, and the report overall demonstrates that the operations and IT teams have adequate controls in place to ensure that financial transactions are undertaken in a timely manner with the correct level of authorisation for all payments.
Aviva worked extremely hard to maintain service levels throughout the last year. We believe that members received good service at a time of crisis and increased demands. This was helped by prioritising staff welfare and IT support. All organisations have changed and will adapt further to a “new normal” position for administration functions, and we will be looking for further improvements as matters become more stable in 2021 and this future vision takes shape.