The end of the customer journey matters more than you think

Customer experience strategies must give endings the same design attention as beginnings

The final customer interaction can shape the memory of the entire relationship. That makes endings a material customer experience issue.

Most companies put significant effort into acquisition and onboarding. They optimize sign-up flows, welcome programs, product education, and early customer support. The same design discipline often weakens when a customer cancels a service, closes an account, completes a contract, files a final complaint, or ends a relationship for another reason.

This creates a clear CX risk. An ending often occurs at an emotionally intense point. A customer may be frustrated by a dispute, concerned about money, disappointed with a service, or dealing with a major life event. The way the company responds during that period can become a lasting part of how the customer remembers the brand.

Psychology helps explain why. Hermann Ebbinghaus first described the principles behind what became known as the serial position effect. People tend to remember information and events at the beginning and end of a sequence better than those in the middle. The related primacy and recency effects help explain why the first and final stages of a customer relationship can remain unusually prominent in memory.

Daniel Kahneman’s work on the peak-end rule adds another dimension. People often evaluate an experience based heavily on its most intense point and how it ended. They do not form that judgment by assigning equal weight to every individual interaction.

For executives, the implication is practical. Journey design should explicitly cover endings. Cancellation, complaint resolution, contract completion, bereavement, account closure, and other final interactions require clear ownership, service standards, and appropriate escalation paths.

This also changes how leaders should think about CX investment. Improving acquisition while leaving exits poorly designed creates an imbalance at two stages that customers are particularly likely to remember. A strong end cannot guarantee loyalty, but it can preserve trust and influence what customers tell others after the commercial relationship has finished.

“Endineering” turns offboarding into a deliberately designed customer experience

Joe Macleod, founder of AndEnd, calls the deliberate design of endings “endineering.” The underlying idea addresses a common operational gap. Companies have developed mature systems for starting customer relationships, while the processes used to end them often receive less attention.

That gap matters because an ending is still part of the product and service experience. Cancellation forms, final bills, data transfers, refunds, complaint settlements, account closures, contract expiry, and support during major life events all communicate how a company treats customers when the relationship changes.

A designed ending starts with understanding the customer’s objective. Someone cancelling a subscription needs confirmation, clear financial terms, access to relevant records, and confidence that recurring charges will stop. A customer completing a long contract may need final documentation and a defined route for future support. A person closing an account after a bereavement has a far more sensitive set of needs.

The operational constraint is ownership. Customer acquisition usually has accountable teams, budgets, metrics, and optimized workflows. End-of-relationship processes can cross customer service, finance, legal, operations, product, and compliance. When accountability is fragmented, customers experience the resulting handoffs and delays.

Executives can address this by treating endings as distinct stages in customer journey management. CX teams should map the major ways relationships conclude, identify the highest-risk interactions, and assign an accountable owner to each process. The design should cover communication, required actions, emotional context, escalation, and the point at which the customer considers the process complete.

Macleod’s concept also expands the strategic purpose of offboarding. A departing customer may return later, purchase another product, recommend the company, or influence other buyers through reviews and personal recommendations. The commercial transaction can finish while the customer’s memory of the company continues.

Endineering therefore creates a useful management discipline: design the final experience with the same intent applied to the first one. For C-suite leaders, the priority is clear ownership. Once accountability exists, teams can measure the experience, remove unnecessary friction, and create endings that remain consistent with the company’s wider customer promise.

Zurich insurance is designing bereavement support around the real cost of loss

Bereavement creates two problems at the same time: emotional distress and a large administrative workload. Zurich Insurance is addressing both through its Empathy Loss Support service.

The service builds on Zurich’s 2025 strategy shift, which placed empathy at the center of its global customer strategy. That approach influences product design, employee training, and the way Zurich supports customers and brokers.

Zurich partnered with technology company Empathy to provide the service to more than three million life protection policyholders and their beneficiaries in the UK. Eligible users receive free access to personalized care plans, dedicated Care Managers, and secure digital tools. These resources help families manage the practical and emotional demands that follow a death.

The administrative burden is substantial. Empathy’s research found that one-third of bereaved people take time off work to handle tasks related to a death. Families spend about 148 hours on average navigating bereavement processes. They also incur approximately $3,100 in costs associated with activities such as probate, estate administration, and funeral logistics.

Those numbers define the operational problem. Bereaved customers must complete complex, time-consuming processes during a period when their ability to manage those tasks may already be under pressure. Reducing that workload creates direct value through saved time, clearer guidance, and more coordinated administration.

Simon Guest, Head of Customer Solutions & Partnerships for Global Life Protection at Zurich Insurance, summarized the interaction between these pressures: “Grief is made harder by logistics and logistics is made harder by grief.”

For executives, Zurich’s approach shows how empathy can translate into service design. The company identified a high-stress stage in the customer journey, measured the practical burden surrounding it, and developed services around specific customer needs. This turns empathy from a broad brand principle into an operating model with defined processes and support.

The lesson extends beyond insurance. Companies should identify customer interactions where emotional pressure and operational complexity occur together. These moments deserve clear ownership and service standards because delays, confusion, and unnecessary effort can have an outsized effect on customer trust.

Zurich gives AI the administrative work and humans the emotional interaction

Zurich has drawn a clear boundary around the role of artificial intelligence in bereavement support. AI handles information processing, personalization, and back-end automation. Trained Care Managers handle emotional conversations with customers and families.

The AI analyzes information supplied by users and recommends personalized pathways through the bereavement process. It can also automate back-end tasks. This reduces administrative effort and helps direct users toward relevant actions and resources.

Human support operates alongside that technology. Families can contact trained Care Managers 24 hours a day, seven days a week through chat, email, and phone. These specialists provide guidance and act as a human point of contact during a highly sensitive period.

Zurich deliberately excludes AI chatbots from personal and emotional conversations. Simon Guest, Head of Customer Solutions & Partnerships for Global Life Protection at Zurich Insurance, has emphasized that this decision is intentional. Zurich wants customers experiencing bereavement to receive human empathy during vulnerable interactions.

This distinction matters for executive AI strategy. The key question is where automation creates customer value. Tasks based on information retrieval, classification, workflow coordination, and routine processing are strong candidates. Interactions that depend heavily on emotional judgment, trust, and sensitivity can require a different operating model.

That approach also provides a practical framework for AI governance. Companies can map customer journeys according to task type and sensitivity, then define where AI can operate independently, where employees should remain responsible, and where technology should support employees behind the scenes. These boundaries can be built into workflow design, employee training, escalation rules, and quality controls.

Zurich’s model shows how AI adoption can be selective by design. Automation absorbs suitable administrative work. Human specialists concentrate on interactions where their judgment and empathy carry the greatest value. For executives deploying AI into customer operations, defining that division of responsibility is a core design decision.

Zurich plans to extend bereavement support into legacy planning and more markets

Zurich Insurance plans to expand its bereavement service beyond support following a death. The next stage includes tools that help customers organize their affairs in advance and communicate their wishes to their families.

Planned services include access to a secure digital platform for legacy planning. Customers will be able to create wills, organize essential information, and document their wishes. This moves part of the customer experience earlier, when individuals have more time and control over important decisions.

Advance planning also addresses a practical source of complexity. Families frequently need to locate documents, establish legal instructions, understand financial affairs, and determine what a loved one wanted. Organizing this information beforehand can create a clearer process for beneficiaries and the people responsible for managing an estate.

For Zurich, the strategy also creates continuity between life protection and bereavement services. Insurance provides a financial benefit after a qualifying event. Legacy planning and administrative support broaden the customer proposition around the processes that occur before and after that event.

Zurich intends to take the service into additional markets through a global rollout. Scaling it will require careful execution. Bereavement, probate, wills, estate administration, privacy requirements, and insurance processes vary across jurisdictions. A global service therefore needs a consistent customer experience supported by local legal, regulatory, and cultural adaptation.

That distinction matters for C-suite leaders considering similar expansion. Standardization can support efficient technology, service processes, and brand consistency. Local requirements determine how those capabilities must operate in practice. Expansion plans should establish which service components can remain global and which require country-level design.

The broader opportunity is to design for customer needs before they become urgent. For insurers, banks, healthcare providers, and other organizations involved in major life events, planning services can reduce future administrative pressure while deepening the practical value of the customer relationship.

Better customer endings can influence acquisition, retention, and brand choice

57% of consumers would choose a life insurer based on the level of bereavement support it provides, according to research from Empathy. That figure turns the quality of an ending into a commercial consideration during customer acquisition.

Zurich’s own research reinforces the point. It found that 43% of consumers would leave a brand because of a lack of compassion. Another 73% said they would avoid companies that fail to demonstrate empathy.

These findings connect customer experience design with buying behavior. Support during difficult moments can influence which provider a customer selects, whether an existing relationship continues, and whether consumers want to engage with a company in the future.

This is especially relevant in life insurance. The value of the product becomes highly visible during a difficult event. Claims handling, communication, administrative support, and treatment of beneficiaries therefore become important expressions of the customer proposition.

For executives, the management challenge is turning empathy into observable performance. Broad commitments to compassionate service provide limited operational guidance. Companies need to identify high-stakes interactions, define the behavior expected from employees and digital systems, and measure whether customers receive the intended experience.

Existing CX measures such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) can form part of that measurement system. Leaders can also examine process outcomes that directly affect vulnerable customers, including resolution times, repeated contacts, transfers between teams, administrative effort, and successful completion of key tasks.

Metrics require careful interpretation. A customer dealing with bereavement or another difficult life event may remain distressed even when a company delivers excellent service. Performance measurement should therefore distinguish the customer’s underlying circumstances from the quality, effort, clarity, and compassion of the company’s response.

The commercial case ultimately rests on customer behavior. Empathy’s 57% finding suggests that bereavement support can affect insurer selection. Zurich’s 43% and 73% findings indicate that perceived compassion can also affect retention and brand consideration. For C-suite leaders, that makes the design of sensitive customer endings relevant to growth, customer risk, and reputation management.

Main highlights

• Design customer endings with intent: Final interactions can disproportionately shape how customers remember an entire relationship. Give cancellations, complaints, account closures, and other endings clear ownership and service standards.
• Make offboarding a managed CX discipline: “Endineering” treats the final customer stage as a designed experience. Map critical endings, identify friction, and assign accountable teams across CX, operations, finance, and compliance.
• Focus empathy on measurable customer burdens: Zurich targets both the emotional and administrative cost of bereavement. Empathy research indicates families spend about 148 hours and $3,100 managing related tasks, giving leaders concrete problems to reduce.
• Set clear boundaries for AI and human support: Zurich uses AI for personalization and administrative processes while trained Care Managers handle emotional interactions. Define where automation creates efficiency and where human judgment and empathy carry greater value.
• Design support before customers reach a crisis: Zurich plans to extend its service into wills, legacy planning, and secure information management, alongside international expansion. Leaders should identify services that reduce complexity before high-stress events occur.
• Treat empathy as a commercial capability: Empathy found that 57% of consumers would choose a life insurer based on bereavement support, while Zurich found 43% would leave a brand over insufficient compassion. Measure sensitive customer experiences alongside NPS, CSAT, retention, and operational outcomes.