Is it right and fair that at a time when we are likely to experience low emotional resilience, we are presented with a considerable list of demands? In this article, we consider bereavement and the experience of informing organisations of a death.

Informing of Loss – the Bereavement Experience

Death is the one certainty of life, yet it is no less of a shock when it occurs. Being told that your close friend or relative has died can spark a wave of emotions. Sadness, fear, relief, anger, guilt or desolation are just a sample of the thoughts and feelings that can hit. The impact can leave people lost, numb, tearful, frustrated and disorientated.

Yet in this time of heightened feelings and reduced emotional resilience, there is also pressure to deal with the practicalities. Within the first few hours and days, you are informed to sort out and pay for death certificates and funeral arrangements. For many people, these are unfamiliar processes, which might feel a little overwhelming in normal circumstances.

At the same time, there is a requirement to inform people. From family and friends to employers and organisations, just keeping track of who you’ve told can be a challenge. Each will be responding, some asking how they can help, others requesting next-step actions. In short, you are bombarded with messages, information and questions.

Bereavement Processes & Paperwork

In most cases, a spouse, parent or child of the deceased has to follow the processes and complete the paperwork required by organisations. If you’ve been lucky enough not to be one of them yet, can you start to consider the fact that most will need to contact at least 20 organisations? It’s a substantial task to undertake. Especially when they have other concerns, including their work, children, finances and everyday necessities to manage.

What makes these processes more complex, is that every organisation has its own policy and process. Each requests different documents to evidence the death and your relationship to the deceased. There is no standardisation of terminology, time frames and required tasks. Can you understand how confusing, frustrating and overwhelming this can be?

At the same time, there is correspondence with solicitors about wills, trusts and other legalities. Most of this will likely be unfamiliar and in a language that most non-legal professionals find hard to understand.

What Needs to Change to Help Bereaved Customers?

Bereaved customer complaints about the experience of contacting organisations highlight the issue. They refer to:

• Complex and confusing processes & paperwork
• Untrained employees who lack empathy
• Inefficient and slow processes that hold up follow-up processes or access to finances
• Having to tell multiple staff about the bereavement to complete the process
• Finding no contact information for an organisation online
• Websites having no information/facility to close an account/cancel a service or subscription
• Inappropriate tone and language used in communication
• Being refused access to complete processes because they are not the account holder

There are some great examples of organisations that have focused on simplifying and streamlining bereavement processes in addition to providing personalised support and empathy. An example is Quilter, who partnered with Three Hands to gain a real-life understanding of bereaved customer perspectives.

In other organisations I’ve worked with, the need to receive original documents has been deemed unnecessary. Instead, a scanned or photographed copy can be emailed or the death certificate number can be accepted.

The Sadmin Campaign

However, there are still organisations that need to make improvements. This is an issue being raised by Marie Curie in their ‘Sadmin’ campaign. As a leading end-of-life charity, Marie Curie is well placed to understand the pressure, stress and impact of complex and demanding post-death paperwork. They are calling for organisations to simplify and standardise the process. Will you sign the petition or review your current support for bereaved customers?

Marie Curie also emphasises the importance of training employees to handle bereavement communications with empathy, kindness and support. This can include having specialist bereavement teams who have the time and expertise to handle multiple products, so a grieving customer is not passed around departments to get everything resolved.

How Can We Assist?

Helen Pettifer Training offers several resources to better prepare teams for bereavement conversations and actions. Our Bereavement Training aims to equip frontline staff to respond appropriately to disclosures of bereavement and terminal illness. In addition, we offer a Bereavement Toolkit which includes a Policy, a guide and customer personas which can assist in-house training teams.

It is important to recognise that no two people will grieve in the same way. However, humanising the process and making it easier to manage will benefit everyone going through this difficult life experience.