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10 Steps Toward Strong Participant Experiences

A new report asserts that today’s consumers do not want “communication,” they want personal guidance. They want to do things when, where and how they prefer. They want things easy and convenient. And they want the whole experience to be enjoyable.

So, how are today’s retirement service providers dealing with these expectations? A new report by Broadridge, in association with Oculus Partners, notes that leading competitors are bringing strong capabilities onstream, building an infrastructure that supports sustainable, consistent and predictable participant experiences across their entire business base. Some of these are being built internally, and, according to the report, some are being built through strong external partnerships and outsourcing arrangements.

Here are 10 capabilities the report says are being used by leading providers across the industry to create strong participant experiences.

Encouragement and support for automatic programs. The report says that leading providers are completely overhauling the participant experience related to automatic enrollment, contribution escalation, QDIA investing, reenrollment, reinstatement and other types of automatic features. Eliminate steps and potential confusion, rethinking when and what information is provided, and what other decisions should accompany the “automatic” transaction.

Interactive calculators and tools to allow the participant to personalize the projections with more information. They are going beyond the calculators of old to ask participants true profiling questions and store that information for future use.

A multi-channel participant experience design with a balance of person-to-person and digital interactions. They are creating linked channels where a person is easily accessed via phone, social media, chat or scheduled appointment, and enabling digital interactions simultaneously with person-to-person.

Personalized retirement income projections for each participant. They are creating personal retirement income projections, taking into account all known information from the employer’s plans, the participant and other purchased information.

A personalized “next best step” messaging approach to communications. They are using all known information, as well as predictive persona information, to offer personalized “next best step” guidance at every interaction.

Personalized and targeted campaigns (digital and print) supplemented with life stage and life event content and messaging. The report says that leading providers are using predictive analytics and trigger points to offer personalized in-the-moment messages that are appropriate for the participant’s situation at the time, as well as including next best step guidance.

Access to financial wellness and investment advice programs that go beyond third-party partnerships and offer truly integrated experiences across select partners by sharing data, offering integrated access, and presenting unified guidance and perspectives.

Dashboards and digitally delivered analytics for the plan sponsor. They are ensuring that sponsors understand how the plan is performing against these new participant experience metrics, providing data and analytics in easy to use formats with drill-down capabilities about the participant activities, engagement, enjoyment and outcomes.

“People like me” benchmarks and comparisons that create the capability to present peer group comparisons and benchmarks within plans or across plans to help participants know where they stand relative to peers in similar situations.

Tracking of participant engagement across channels by harnessing the power of data from their platforms to more accurately and completely measure channel usage at a participant level across channels and by type of interaction.