SOCIAL INSIGHT

Insight from charities and ‘lived experts’ to help businesses improve life for customers

We use social insight to help businesses gain first-hand insight on vulnerable and underserved customers – and to innovate with empathy.

We believe that inclusive business means products, services and customer experiences that work for everyone. We have developed three approaches, with healthy overlap between them, to support businesses to be more inclusive through social insight:

Insight Sessions
Insight sessions allow people from business to get under the skin of societal issues and the realities of life for underserved and vulnerable customers. We run sessions online and in-person, over full days and in ‘bite-sized’ chunks, with active participation from client teams, and for large audiences, through webinars and podcasts. In all cases they’re designed and delivered with charity partners and lived experts from our own community. Our Outside In Project brings insight to a number of member businesses at once.
Inclusive Design and Product Testing
We gather lived experts in a wide range of circumstances to form panels. Those panels critique, test and help develop products, services and customer journeys – making them more understandable, accessible and inclusive. We run one-off and regular panels. Some are formed to bring specific experience, such as economic abuse or gambling-related harm, into businesses; in other cases, panels represent many different circumstances. Product owners from businesses play an active part in the sessions, experiencing the insight and feedback first-hand, making them well placed to then embed in the day-to-day and, when done at scale, to influence business culture.
Immersive Innovation
Immersive innovation is an in-depth sprint over two or three days designed to tackle big problem statements and opportunity areas. It starts with deep immersion in a vulnerability topic with an expert charity and the people it supports. The resulting insights help to generate new ideas and approaches. The best ideas are prototyped and then critiqued by the charity and lived experts to ensure they’ll do the job they need to do for vulnerable and underserved customers.

Providing the ‘glue’ throughout is our Lived Experts Research Community – a group of over 200 people whose lived experience, stories and ideas play a fundamental part in making our projects and programmes real, visceral and highly impactful.

You can learn more on our dedicated website for social insight – www.threehandsinsight.co.uk.

““The work with Three Hands has been enlightening; there is nothing more powerful than engaging with customers and charities to understand their needs.”

Giulia Ajello, Head of Customer Office, M&G

Social Insight Case Studies

Use of Cash

3rd November 2022

Understanding why so many people use cash

In a world where many assume the move to a cashless society is only a matter of time, the programme’s aim was to deepen the bank’s understanding of how and why millions of people in the UK continue to choose to use cash.

Innovating for an ageing population

14th July 2020

Understanding the financial lives of older people and co-creating transformational solutions

Ingredients: An ageing society; a business with an objective to innovate for people approaching later life; an older people’s charity; our social insight process; and lockdown!

From lived experience to customer strategy

10th March 2020

Identifying what the bank’s role should be with customers at risk of, or experiencing, gambling-related harm

“Money became my god because it allowed me to gamble” – explained one former gambling addict as we began two days of immersive innovation with Santander.

Vulnerability and pensions

13th February 2020

Understanding what drives customers’ pension decisions

Why are people cashing in their pensions at age 55 and what role do financial institutions have in supporting their customers?

Life Insurance and Cancer

3rd September 2018

Gaining insight on people’s experiences of cancer

The team responsible for life and critical illness products at Royal London was aware of the changing landscape of the cancer world, but wanted to learn directly from people affected – with a view to reviewing and developing their product range and enhancing customer experiences.

Innovation for older customers

12th February 2018

Understanding the pros and cons of digital banking for older people

Combine an ageing population with the digital revolution and drop in the fact that older people often represent an affluent customer base – and solutions are needed to ensure older customers are not being left behind by technology.