Helping people love later life

Charity Age UK operates in a competitive market and needs to work effectively to raise awareness around its cause whilst also providing easy ways to convert this awareness into action.

The organisation needed to change the way it delivered digital services to enhance its work on every level, from making it easier to get information and reducing call centre queries, to wider strategic offerings to help reduce loneliness among older people.

Our main objectives were to:

• Help Age UK use digital technologies more effectively for the tactical delivery of services
• Transform Age UK over time into an organisation that uses digital technologies strategically, harnessing it to maximise the impact of existing and new services and campaigns.

We have been working as Age UK's dedicated user experience consultancy and digital advisor since 2015, supporting them on an ongoing basis:

1. We started by basing ourselves on-site with Age UK's digital team to better understand the business goals and strategic plans. Over a two-week period, we got to know how teams worked together, as well as the strategic, long-term plans.

2. We then put together a 12-month project roadmap of projects to deliver, both tactical changes to enhance the website, and larger changes to improve service delivery for older people and carers.

3. We delivered a number of tactical projects to quickly enhance existing services, such as new navigation options, a revised online donation journey, and improving the local search directory.

4. We've also transformed the delivery of many services. One success story is the multi-award winning Call-In-Time service. We've replaced a labour-intensive and inefficient process with a streamlined digital one. As a result, we're better able to link volunteers with older people to hold regular conversations, helping combat loneliness.

5. We regularly experiment with emerging technology and have launched a chatbot to signpost people and provide support (with great results).

6. Finally, we're leading a digital transformation programme to embed customer-centred thinking and innovation. We chair a quarterly advisory session with the CEO, run workshops with the board, and are delivering a company-wide training programme.

We've run research with more than 300 participants to guide our work, ensuring deliverables are always user-centred.