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Where we need to do better

We are committed to using the results of the Customer Impact survey to improve the overall experience we provide to our customers. Our aim is for each rating to keep getting better, but not all our scores went up this year and we know that we can improve in a range of areas.

44%

Our score for 'overall quality of product and service' remained consistent with last year. We believe that we can improve this score by ensuring that our products fully meet our customers' expectations more frequently, and we will be focusing on this over the coming year.

54%

More than half our customers - 54% - said that they would be likely to recommend us - our score for this group was up by 8% but again we can do better here.

In 2007, we are focusing particularly on the way that we handle complaints, and on making all our written communications as clear and straightforward as possible.

Handling complaints more effectively

Of all the Standard Life customers who took part in the survey, we were pleased to discover that only a very small number - 3% - had complained in the last year. However, when these customers were asked individually what they thought about the way that we handled their complaints, they weren't as satisfied as we would like.

The way we look after customers who are not completely happy with our service is very important to us and this is certainly an area where we have a great deal of work to do. Our aim is to make sure that the whole complaints process is simpler, clearer, and more streamlined. We want our customers to feel that we have got to the heart of the issue as quickly as possible, tackled it effectively and been helpful from start to finish.

To help us improve in the future, we have started a project to gather more meaningful information about the reasons our customers make complaints. This will help us respond to complaints more effectively and improve our ability to investigate and deal with the root causes of each issue.

Explaining our products more clearly

Financial planning can be complex - and choosing the right option can make all the difference to long-term financial security. To help our customers make the best decisions for them, we aim to make all our sales communications clear and straightforward.

Customers gave our sales communications a score of 40% for clarity this year. We know that this is a very important area, so this year we will begin updating our website and our product guides to make sure that they focus on your needs and are clear and easy to understand.

Almost half our customers said our statements and personalised letters were 'excellent' or 'very good'. We'd like you all to feel this way.

Making your annual statements clearer

Straightforward, helpful statements are important for all financial products - and with complex, long-term plans like pensions and investments they have to work particularly hard. We were pleased to see our rating in this important area go up by 5% this year, but are acutely aware that our score of 43% is far from good enough.

To help tackle this, we are planning some in-depth research that will look specifically at what our customers want from their annual statements. The aim will be to establish how clearly our statements are getting the information across and give us a sound basis to keep improving.