That’s handy… how insurer Standard Life uses virtual reality for human touch

I need all the strength I can muster to grip my cell phone firmly. Trying to type on a laptop keyboard is almost impossible. My fingers just don’t want to bend enough to hover over the keys.

I’m lucky I don’t have arthritis. But I wear special gloves to mimic the experience of someone who does.

The gloves consist of thick plastic strips stretched over the back of each finger and secured to my fingertips and wrists with Velcro. They restrict the movement of my hands in much the same way arthritis does. I find it utterly debilitating and irritating – and that’s without the pain that comes with it.

The gloves are one of the tools that savings and insurance giant Standard Life uses to help its staff better empathize with its customers’ experiences.

Of its five million customers, the company has hundreds of thousands with disabilities, and it is committed to better understanding their experiences and how it can support them.

Standard Life believes that getting this right takes more than drawing conclusions about what their customers experience on a daily basis; the staff must feel it themselves.

Having spent a morning with Standard Life at the Innovation Lab in Edinburgh testing and developing these tools, I agree.

I knew that having arthritis limits hand mobility. But it’s only by experiencing something similar for myself that I really feel how limiting it is, and how difficult it is to perform the daily tasks that I take for granted.

In the Money pages of The Mail on Sunday and Daily Mail, we regularly write about the disappearance of the human dimension in financial services.

Face-to-face chats with bank branch employees are increasingly being replaced by remote call centers, which in turn are being replaced by chatbots. Sometimes it feels like financial companies view their customers’ needs as more of an inconvenience than the core of what they do.

So when I heard that a major financial firm was bucking the trend and investing in showing humanity to their clients, I decided to take a look.

Then I try out a range of glasses that mimic different eye conditions. One pair shows me what it’s like to have cataracts, and another pair shows tunnel vision.

I expected that having my vision clouded in these ways would make it harder to read websites and printed materials—the sorts of things we’re required to do when dealing with financial services companies. But I hadn’t realized how vulnerable and isolated I would feel because of these visual limitations.

Gail Izat, from Standard Life, tells me that we can only begin to understand what people go through by experiencing it firsthand, if only for a moment. That is what makes the tools of the Innovation Lab so valuable.

“Many of our employees who try these tools find they give them a new perspective,” she says. ‘In addition to working with people who have gained experience, we find that empathizing with ourselves can really help us to do the right thing for our customers.’

Standard Life has made numerous changes to the way it treats its customers. For example, it has simplified navigation on its website so that finding important information takes as few clicks as possible on a smartphone or mouse. It has also worked on the color contrast across all of its platforms to make information easier to read and made it possible to zoom in on the text to increase the font size.

Standard Life knows that many of its customers also experience poor mental health. The rising cost of living only makes it more difficult. Of course, it’s nearly impossible to simulate the pressures of surviving on a tight budget. But Standard Life has created a virtual reality tool to give staff at least a glimpse. When I put on the VR headset, I witness a simulated conversation between a customer and a Standard Life employee.

To my left, I see the client sitting at her kitchen table on the phone explaining how she struggles with her finances and mental health. She sometimes talks with her head in her hands, tears streaming down her cheeks. It’s just as realistic as if I were in the room with her. I can see her counter in the background, the ironing board and a pile of laundry across the room, her houseplant and lino floor.

To my right, I see an employee she’s speaking to in a call center, complete with telephone headset, mug of tea on her desk, and colleagues chatting in the background. The employee listens sympathetically and tries to help.

“A lot of people are quite moved when they see this,” says Gail. “It is not realistic for employees to literally sit in customers’ homes to understand their lives and what they are going through. But the VR can at least give them a feeling.’

Standard Life’s efforts are an encouraging reminder that as we move toward a world of AI, automation, and digital-first, some companies are still doing their best to ensure all customers get the support they need.

I’m sure there are many more – and I’d love to hear about it. Please let me know about your experiences with companies that support you and still offer the human touch.