As restrictions ease and we exit lockdown, I’ve been reflecting on the huge impact of the pandemic on all our lives. It has marked us in ways we could never have imagined. For some of us, it has very sadly meant the loss of our loved ones.
My family, like many others, has dealt with bereavement during this particularly challenging time. Our aim in the probate service is to ease the burden of people who are grieving, by making the process of applying for probate as easy as possible.
In recent months we’ve improved the service and made it more efficient in several ways. I’ll explain these measures by looking at how we responded to 3 common issues reported with the service.
“People are waiting months for a process that used to take a few weeks”
Some cases are more difficult to deal with than others and take longer to complete. But the vast majority are standard cases that we can complete at speed. We want to make sure we’re really transparent about how long cases take us to process. We recently published a breakdown of waiting times.
For standard digital applications, it now takes us less than a week to issue a grant once we receive the right documents. It’s fair to say our workload increased substantially during the winter peak and the second wave of the pandemic. But the average overall time it took to issue grants in most cases did not exceed 6 weeks.
We can complete digital cases more quickly than paper applications, so we’re encouraging more people to apply online. We’re working on this with organisations such as Citizens Advice, funeral services and the Office of the Public Guardian.
Complex applications often require specialist knowledge, so they do take more time to resolve. We recognised that we needed to improve in this area. Earlier this year, we put together a plan to speed up the process and reduce the number of complaints. We’ve lowered the number of outstanding complex cases by more than 75% since February 2021, and most outstanding complex cases are less than 10 weeks old.
“Callers are waiting for up to an hour to speak to an agent”
We’re improving our service in a number of ways. In the last few months we’ve reduced the average call wait time from 19 to 7 minutes and are committed to improving this further. We did this by increasing the number of team leaders supporting staff, providing more training, extending our opening hours and rolling out an integrated technology system. The new system reduces wait times and enables us to answer more calls. We’ll keep reviewing and improving our user experience over the coming weeks.
We’re also working with our professional users to improve online dashboards for digital cases.
Dashboards provide them with real-time progress updates, with notifications sent at each stage of the process. This reassures users that we’ve received their documents and allows us to keep users informed if their case is going to take longer than expected due to its complexity.
In addition, we introduced a shared platform for all our inheritance tax forms. This system reduces the number of emails we receive, allowing us to search for queries more easily and speed up the process.
“The probate service is less accessible and more impersonal since registry offices closed”
Our digital service and dedicated helpline offers more choice. The online service allows people to apply, pay and swear a statement of truth online at any time, no matter where they are. For most, this will mean that they will no longer need to visit a probate registry or solicitor’s office. This speeds up the process and makes it more convenient.
It’s also easier to get help with applications, as our dedicated helpline is open for longer.
Anyone can call from 8am to 6pm on weekdays, and 8am to 2pm on Saturdays. Through extended opening hours and popular webchat service, we’re answering an extra 450 customer queries each week.
We’ve invested a lot in our people and you can see this in some of the comments our call handling team receive. Just recently, an applicant said this about one of our service centre agents:
“I would like to emphasise how incredible Yasmin was in my second call correcting the information I was told earlier [and]setting my mind at ease… She was very kind and thoughtful, which is greatly appreciated when having to go over things in relation to my mother's death.”
I find comments like these very heartening. They show the value of investing in our people. We’re continuing to review our approach to training new staff in call handling. We’re improving their understanding of the process and making sure they’re supported by more experienced colleagues in the early stages.
Find out how to apply for probate, or get help with your application.