Most platforms don’t change the core of what they do very much over time. Some bits and bobs evolve – usually for the better – and new functionality might get bolted on. But if you stick to the core functionality – adding a client, opening a wrapper, buying a fund, rebalancing, taking income – most user experiences remain pretty consistent.
I had a shot recently at Standard Life’s Wrap platform for the first time in ages, and was able to navigate around it with about 75 to 80 per cent of the confidence that I had when I used to demonstrate it back in 2010.
But that’s not the case when a provider replatforms. Users of Aviva’s facility have had to unlearn what they’ve been used to, and relearn new screens, new processes, new workarounds, new hacks, and lots of other small everyday things that make the difference between going home that evening whistling a jaunty tune or going home with a hooded look and reaching straight for the bottle.
I suspect bottle shops in areas with high numbers of Aviva users have been doing rather well in the past month or so.
The bright side
But here’s the thing. It’s undeniable that Aviva has had some problems with things that just don’t work. But equally, many of the things that have got advisers ticked aren’t faults. They’re just new ways of doing the same old things. Some of them are transition issues that will resolve after about two months – this is particularly true for some of the income payment and fee payment issues.
Those new ways might be better or worse than the old one, and that’s a reasonable debate to have. What’s happened, though, is that faults have got conflated with frustrations at new working practices and new things to remember and learn, resulting in the whole thing becoming almost impossible to unpick.
Interestingly, this is especially true for advisers who don’t use Aviva every day. I’ve spoken to regular and less-regular users and, in my entirely non-scientific sample, the more frequent users are happier than the less-frequent ones. That’s because they were handled one-to-one by Aviva and took the time to really engage with the new information they were given – they had to because the platform is such a big part of their daily working lives.
In contrast, I think some less-frequent users expected that ‘it’ll just work’, and then hit the wall pretty hard when they saw how different the new facility is.
Don’t get me wrong, both sets of users hate the stuff that doesn’t work. But one set is able to differentiate between the shock of using a new platform and its faults, the other isn’t.
