The Good, The Bad and the Ugly - My Experience with Organisations and Bereavement

My mother died 5 weeks ago.

Organising the funeral was really straightforward, and as good an experience as it could be under the circumstances, because the organisations and people involved with someone dying are very accustomed to dealing with grieving relatives, and are kind and caring. The undertaker, the crematorium, the church, the celebrant, the florist, the venue we held the "afters" at post-funeral service.

Then it was time to close the other parts of her life down - ironically I always call this stuff "life's admin" - you know, the accounts you have, the memberships, the subscriptions, the mail, power, broadband.

This has given me a very interesting insight into how organisations treat bereaved family members who are trying to close things. Unfortunately most were not great.

At one end was the wonderful. A publishing house (Iceberg Press) who promptly cancelled her magazine subscription and refunded the last 2 months without request or fuss, all dealt with along with a personal touching message.

Some organisations had contact details and forms ready on their website (well done BT). Others responded at least to email or help requests quickly.

Then there were some whoh refused to allow any access to accounts that we couldn’t get into despite showing death certs (why?). Amazon had a bereavement team who did deal quickly with cancelling various subscriptions but refused to let us get access to her account to save her address book and order history (wouldn't that make a nice document for a future anthropologist or archaeologist to uncover).

At the other end of the scale was the downright not very nice. The association that runs the sheltered housing unit she lived in upon hearing of her death wrote a letter which took a week to reach us saying they were happy to give us 2 weeks’ "grace period" (1 of which had already lapsed) to remove her belongings and return the unit to an empty, clean state. This is despite them allowing a living person who wants to vacate 4 weeks. Never mind the fact that you are trying to organise a funeral, deal with immediate grief etc etc. Their 2 pager enclosed with the letter had the entire tone throughout of "you may end up owing us money" not "we're so sorry you're having to go through this here's how we can help".

Another experience (with the supermarket she shopped every week with) ended up pretty dismal. Here's what happened:

• I managed to find a password and log into her account. There was no information in there on how to close the account or contact them in this scenario.
• Then I went to their Contact Us page which had an email to contact for any membership queries. I sent an email with her account details, contact details and death cert.
• The auto reply said the email was no longer monitored and that you needed to click here to fill out a webform. The link sent you back to the Contact Us page...
• Then I went onto Twitter. Their Twitter account said to DM with membership queries but nobody had responded by 72 hours later. (They still haven't responded btw)
• The Facebook page didn’t reply to the message when I tried that route. Then I rang the general call centre number. The while-you-wait-message told me there were long delays with at least a 30 minute wait and there was no option to press a button to get through to a bereavement team. I tried phoning a 2nd time then gave up as I didn’t have time to wait.
• Finally I was forced to use LinkedIn to find a director of membership to contact to ask could someone help. That kicked them into action and I was contacted and all resolved.

So here are my thoughts on organisations and bereavement as I emerge from this period of contacting and emailing and phoning.

1. Respect the fact that the person was your customer/client/member and give that due consideration. Tell the family your organisation appreciated their custom/membership and that you are sorry to hear they are gone. While I was told by many people they were very sorry for my loss, very few acknowledged the relationship my mother had had with them. It meant the ones who did stood out.
2. If you don’t have the staff to have a dedicated bereavement team/email/phone number, then make sure people know how to contact you for assistance with this particular scenario. Consider offering a dedicated bereavement contact number/option on the automated system/email.
3. Your Contact Us page should have clear instructions for how to get in touch for the bereaved family member. (No brainer really but so many websites had nothing on this)
4. Make sure it’s easy within an account area once logged in to know how to close things down. Rememeber this isn’t a normal living person closing things because they no longer want it, their family member is closing it because they died. Is the user experience up to scratch in that context? At least 3 organisations I dealt with had no way of actioning or closing an account when you were logged in, which forces the family member to spend extra time and effort trying to find out how to do this or to find a person to help.
5. If the scenario allows or requires transfer of ownership of the account/membership then make that easy and seamless to do.
6. In this day and age of email communication unsubscribing should be a one click painless experience (possibly 2 if you feel like giving the reason). To my surprise, many websites that my mother had subscribed to required you to log in and choose your communication options (TAKE HER OFF YOUR LIST) or required an extra fill in of email address. I know you don't want to lose people but seriously?
7. Review your processes for communication with the dead person’s family. Are you giving them enough time to deal with the closure / paperwork / requirements? Remember this isn’t a normal context, this is a highly emotional and charged time where every email or phone call is a weight.
8. This is the most important one (maybe I should have put it first!) - give any correspondence you are going to send out to the family to someone who has worked in a bereavement context to review the tone and words used. I was shocked by the tone taken by a couple of organisations honestly.

If you are curious to read about her wonderful life, my mother's obituary is here .