Congratulations to Farewill for scooping three awards at the second prestigious British Wills and Probate Awards on 17th October 2019 at the esteemed Belfry Resort and Hotel.
Farewill demonstrated their customer-centric, technology driven and innovative approach to will writing by winning The National Will Writing Firm of the Year, Best Use of Technology and Young Practitioner of the Year.
With the increased number of submissions in categories for the awards this year, the judging panel were spoilt for choice when searching for a National Will Writer of the Year, eventually whittling the list down to Hugh James Solicitors, Co-op Legal Services and of course Farewill with the latter being crowned.
The judges commented on Farewill by saying they’re “clearly demonstrating innovation through technology to positively transform the experience of writing a will. An outstanding approach to marketing resulting in numerous television and radio appearances this year.”
Farewill also demonstrated their technological prowess to the judges, winning Best Use of Technology. The judges viewed Farewill’s services as a “consumer-focused business that has seen huge growth in a short period. A comprehensive and bespoke digital product which provides an exceptional customer experience.”
Congratulations on winning National Will Writing Firm of the Year, tell us about your Will writing firm and the services you provide.
Thank you! We’re thrilled to have won.
Farewill launched in December 2016. Since then, we’ve grown to become the largest provider of wills in England and Wales, writing 1 in 25 wills. We help you through a jargon-free, step-by-step process to complete your legally binding will or get probate online, from the comfort of your own home. Every will is checked and approved by our expert will specialists, who are also on hand to help throughout.
This combination of technology and human expertise is helping us to transform the experience of wills and probate, and is a big part of what makes Farewill different.
How has your firm developed and progressed within the last 12 months?
We’re growing remarkably fast. In the last 12 months, sales have grown by over 10x, and we’ve expanded our team from 16 to 49. We’re also proud to be the nation’s best-voted provider, with 4.9 on Trustpilot from over 2,800 happy customers.
This year, along with growing our will-writing and professional executor service, Farewill Trustees, we also launched our Probate service. This has already grown to 50 cases a month.
What new systems and processes have you implemented which operates in the best interests of clients and the profession itself?
As an industry, we need to tackle consumer apathy towards will-writing, which underpins the UK’s 40% intestacy rate.
We believe that the best way to do this is by focusing on simplicity, accessibility, awareness and trust. So everything we do is designed around these four things – making the whole process as seamless and enjoyable for our customers as possible.
For instance, our will-writing product helps customers create their legally binding will from the comfort of their own home, on our website, for £90, and takes just 15 minutes to write. It fits into modern life in a way that consumers expect today.
Tell us about the technology you have implemented which has enhanced the efficiency, productivity and effectiveness of your business?
We’ve built the digital product to allow us to transform and streamline the risk management of volume will-delivery, enabling scale in a controlled and managed way.
For instance, each will goes through a three-tier verification system; customer input checks, algorithmic first checks, then human second and final third checks if necessary. We’ve built a proprietary algorithm for automatically detecting errors in customer inputs in wills and filtering them into the appropriate Will Specialist checking system.
Crucially, we also never underestimate the importance of expert human support – and we apply digital tools to help make this even more available to customers. As well as being on the phone seven days a week, we offer real-time chat with our experts at every stage. This helps customers ask the “stupid questions” and takes away the worry of getting it wrong. Our average response time on customer support is just 15 seconds.
Behind the scenes, we’ve also been able to link disparate tools across live chat, phone and on-site to ensure we have a 360 customer view of conversations with anyone in the team at any stage of the journey.
We can also seamlessly keep customers up to date on any changes in the law, and encourage customers digitally to keep their wills up to date, while providing an unlimited updating service for £10 a year.
Why is the British Wills and Probate Awards event, which recognises excellence and highlights achievement in the sector, so important to the industry?
It’s hugely important. The more we can encourage innovation in the sector, the more we can advance the industry in the long term. We’re proud to be a part of it!
