Editorial
Research Report
Building the Case for Modern Public Sector Messaging
The Gist
- Why do endings matter as much as beginnings in customer experience? Psychological principles like the peak-end rule show people judge experiences by their most intense moment and how they conclude — not the sum of every interaction.
- What is "endineering" and why do most brands ignore it? Coined by Joe Macleod, it's the deliberate design of relationship endings — a skill brands master for onboarding but rarely apply to offboarding.
- How is Zurich Insurance applying this to bereavement support? Its Empathy Loss Support service pairs AI-driven logistics with human Care Managers to ease the administrative burden on grieving families.
- What's the business case for investing in better endings? Cited research found more than half of consumers would choose an insurer based on bereavement support, while a majority say they'd avoid brands that show a lack of compassion.
When it comes to our personal lives, first impressions matter.
Within seconds of meeting someone new, we often form opinions about them based on things like how they look, dress, act, as well as their emotional state.
They also matter in customer experience (CX), which is why businesses often focus heavily on the beginning of a customer’s journey, knowing that a strong start to the relationship is often key to building an enduring one.
Endings Leave the Deepest Mark on Customer Memory
However, last impressions matter, too.
How a customer relationship ends, whether through termination, a complaint, a dispute, or the natural conclusion of a customer’s journey with a brand, can leave a lasting impression that can, in many cases, define the entire experience.
The Psychology Behind Why Last Impressions Stick
According to psychology, this happens for two reasons.
The first is the primacy and recency effect (also known as the serial position effect), first described by Hermann Ebbinghaus, which holds that people tend to have better recall of events or things that happened at the very beginning or the very end of an experience or relationship. For example, in human relationships, we tend to remember the start and end of relationships more vividly because these are usually the moments when our emotions are at their most intense.
The Peak-End Rule and Why Endings Dominate Memory
The second explanation is the peak-end rule, which many people will be familiar with through the work of Daniel Kahneman. This is a psychological heuristic which suggests that people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak (its most intense point) and at its end. What this means is that rather than evaluating every moment of an experience, our memories of specific "snapshots" tend to dominate our memory and the value we place on the whole experience.
Endineering: The Overlooked Discipline of Designing Endings
But here is the problem. Many brands don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how their relationships with their customers end, and, according to Joe Macleod, the founder of AndEnd, that is a missed opportunity.
Macleod has spent the last few years carving out an important space in the experience world, talking about endings, why they are important and how we craft them. He calls this practice “endineering” and notes that while businesses know exactly how to sell products and create great onboarding experiences, they fail to apply those skills to offboarding or the end of a customer relationship, leaving the end of a customer’s experience with a brand often bereft of emotion and meaning.
Related Article: Using the Peak-End Rule for Better Customer Journeys
Inside Zurich's Empathy Loss Support Service
One brand that is bucking this trend is Zurich Insurance.
Recently, they launched a new Empathy Loss Support™ service, which falls squarely within the endings category and builds on their 2025 strategy shift, which placed empathy at the centre of their global customer strategy, influencing product design, employee training and how the business supports brokers and customers.
Partnering with technology company Empathy, they are giving more than three million life protection policyholders and their beneficiaries in the UK free access to personalized care plans, dedicated care managers for personalized guidance and secure digital tools to help manage the emotional and practical pressures that follow the death of their loved one.
Their approach aims to tackle the very real problem that, as Simon Guest, Head of Customer Solutions & Partnerships for Global Life Protection at Zurich Insurance, describes it, "Grief is made harder by logistics and logistics is made harder by grief."
Their approach is also set to save customers a significant amount of both time and money, with Empathy’s research finding that a third of bereaved people have to take time off work to manage administrative tasks associated with the death of a loved one. In addition, their research finds that, on average, families spend roughly 148 hours navigating the bereavement process and incur costs of approx. $3,100 to manage tasks such as probate, estate administration and funeral logistics.
How the Service Uses AI for Logistics, Not Emotion
In practice, the service will work by using artificial intelligence to do the "heavy lifting,” analyzing user information to suggest the best personalized pathways and to automate back-end processes. However, the emotional support provided to policyholders and the bereaved will remain strictly human, with families able to access trained Care Managers 24/7 via chat, email and phone, who will serve as sounding boards and be able to offer expert guidance.
Why Zurich Kept Chatbots Out of the Emotional Conversation
This was very intentional, with Guest emphasizing that Zurich deliberately refrained from using AI chatbots for these personal and emotional interactions, aiming to ensure customers experience authentic human empathy during vulnerable times.
Zurich’s plan is to develop the service by offering additional services, such as access to a secure digital platform that helps customers plan for their legacy, create wills and organize essential information, so that their families clearly understand their wishes. They also plan to expand it into other markets as part of a global rollout strategy.
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Key Takeaways From Zurich's Approach to CX Endings
The following table highlights the most important lessons, actions and strategic considerations emerging from Zurich's bereavement support launch and the broader case for endineering in CX.
| Key Area | What Happened | Why It Matters | Recommended Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Psychology of endings | The peak-end rule and serial-position effect show people judge experiences by their most intense and final moments | Most CX investment goes toward onboarding, leaving a memory-defining moment under-designed | Audit journey maps specifically for endings, not just first-touch moments |
| Endineering as a discipline | Joe Macleod's "endineering" reframes offboarding as a designed experience rather than an afterthought | Poorly designed endings can define a customer's entire perception of a brand | Assign explicit ownership of ending and offboarding experiences within the CX team |
| Zurich's Empathy Loss Support | AI handles logistics and personalization while human Care Managers handle all emotional contact with bereaved customers | Offers a replicable model for pairing automation with human empathy at vulnerable moments | Map which "human-critical" moments in your own journey should stay AI-free |
| Business case | Cited research found over half of consumers would choose an insurer based on bereavement support, and many would leave a brand lacking empathy | Ties emotional design directly to retention and acquisition, not just goodwill | Build empathy metrics into CX KPIs alongside NPS and CSAT |
The Business Case for Investing in Better Endings
We will see how the new service develops and what its uptake will be. But with Empathy’s research finding that 57% of consumers would choose a life insurer based on the level of bereavement support they offered, and Zurich’s own research finding that 43% of consumers would leave a brand due to a lack of compassion, while 73% would avoid companies that fail to show empathy, it’s clear that easing the burden at the end of a journey is just as vital as delivering a great beginning.
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