Our mission was to create a vision and concept for Varma’s digital customer experience and its development. The goals set for the co-operation were clear from the beginning. The foundation for the co-operation was Varma and Siili’s shared idea that a better customer experience creates more satisfied customers and employees and increases the productivity of business.

In practice, this meant developing the customer and user experience of digital services and the ways of operating to be more customer-oriented and ensuring that they support Varma’s strategy. Mutual trust and shared vision of the goals reinforced the idea of a longer term partnership.

Since people-centricity and customer orientation was highly valued, the co-operation was started by investigating the needs and behavior of customers: the expectations and needs of Varma’s customers in the context of pension services. An understanding of the expectations and wishes of customers was acquired through participatory activity with the people at Varma as well as Varma’s customers. The research findings were compared to Varma’s strategy, and the end result was the creation of summarized sectors and themes for reaching a competitive customer experience.

“In addition to the vision and concepts, shared ways of operating were created. They highlight customer orientation, such as the participatory approach to customers, the design system, the internal division of customer understanding and participatory planning. I have been pleased with how these person-centered ways of operating have clearly become a daily element of Varma’s operations, and I can see that they have been an essential part of the co-operation,” says Teemu Kumpulainen, a designer at Siili.

The transparency of the development and process have been highly valued during the co-operation. Varma’s entire development organization were informed about the steps of the process through open demos and open communication.

The compatible cultures and values of Varma, Siili and other suppliers have affected the success of the co-operation.

“Many people might think that the pension system is a somewhat slow sector, but my own experience with Varma has been the complete opposite of that. It has been great to see the customers have an enthusiastic and customer-oriented approach to development. This has helped us in our work. Varma already had really good elements in its operations, such as a culture of open communication and transparency. I think the co-operation between Varma and the teams of suppliers has been really great,” praises Kosonen.

The results of the co-operation can already be seen in the user experience of the reformed services, for example.

“Varma’s operations affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of Finns annually. It is extremely significant work. This development work has been highly valuable as well, and it has been great to be a part of it,” says Kosonen.

Siili has been a seamless co-operator in Varma’s multi-supplier model.

“It has been a joy to co-operate and to make clearly visible and concrete reforms possible for the customers,” say Mari Heikinmaa and Heidi Vehokari from the Digital and Population Data Services of Varma.