Customer Community helped Kela gain better understanding of customer needs in 2025
Kela’s Customer Community grew to almost 2,100 members in 2025, offering a glimpse into the daily lives, service experiences and development needs of Kela’s customers. Kela will use this valuable information to improve its customer focus. Kela’s Customer Community is looking forward to another great year in 2026. New members are always welcome to join the community for a chance to make a difference.
The members of Kela’s Customer Community are frequently asked to share their experiences with Kela’s services and provide suggestions for improvement. In 2025, members were invited to participate in eight surveys on the customer perspective of topics such as Kela’s services for families with children, the daily lives of pensioners, development suggestions for Kela’s customer service channels and what the welfare society might look like in the future.
“The members of our Customer Community are always ready to help us understand how they live their daily lives and make a difference in how Kela operates. The feedback they provide helps us improve our services to a point where we can provide fast and fair access to our services across all customer segments,” says Ossi Alho, Lead Service Designer at Kela.
Survey results in 2025 highlighted sources of stress and the need for clarity
In the surveys conducted in 2025, many customers reported experiencing financial uncertainty and feeling overwhelmed by the complex benefit system. In families with children, one adult would usually be primarily responsible for communicating with Kela, and respondents expressed a desire for a feature in Kela’s e-services that would give them an overall understanding of the entire family’s situation. In another survey, respondents saw retirement as a significant new phase in life where their own functional capacity had an impact on their ability to use Kela’s services and lead their daily lives in general.
E-services drew comment from respondents regardless of their digital skills. Customers expect user-friendliness from e-services, but the need for one-on-one support still persists, particularly in more complex situations. On the whole, respondents found the OmaKela e-service to be an easy way to access Kela’s services, but many expressed a desire for a clearer overview of all their benefits. Respondents were cautiously optimistic about the use of artificial intelligence (AI), especially as a tool that would help them look up information or fill out forms, but respondents also wished for Kela to communicate more clearly about how AI is used at Kela to strengthen trust.
Respondents across multiple surveys brought up issues related to the information provided about processing times and progress made on a customer’s application. Kela kept these survey results in mind when drafting a new version of the page about processing times (kela.fi/processing-times). The goal was to give a clearer overview of the processing times and to provide instructions that are easier to understand.
One of the most popular themes in 2025 was a thought experiment on what the welfare society might look like in 2045. The respondents expressed a desire for a more communal, fair and humane society. The opinions of our Customer Community members are an important source of data for planning Kela’s operations in the long term, and these data are also used in Kela’s foresight work and in the strategy process of the Ministry Social Affairs and Health.
A feedback survey conducted among members confirmed that they perceive the Customer Community to be a good way to have their say about Kela’s operations. At the same time, however, members wished for more visible examples of how their opinions are used in the development of Kela’s services and in the implementation of practical changes.
New members always welcome
Kela’s Customer Community was established in 2024, and it currently has more than 2,100 members. Kela hopes that people from diverse backgrounds and in different life situations join the Community to help us gain as broad an understanding of our diverse customer base as possible.
Kela’s Customer Community is open to all persons aged 16 or over. The Community operates primarily online, and invitations to fill out surveys and complete other tasks are sent via email. Each member can freely decide which surveys to answer and how often they want to participate.
All answers are anonymous and do not affect the respondent’s customer relations with Kela or their benefits in any way. The Customer Community operates in English, Finnish and Swedish.
“We want to hear from our customers in as many customer segments as we can. That is why new members are warmly welcome to join the Customer Community for a chance to tell us what their daily lives look like and share their experiences using Kela’s services,” says Alho.
New surveys coming in 2026
Kela’s Customer Community will continue to operate in 2026. The first survey to go out in 2026 charts the development needs of different customer segments for Kela’s future services. Kela will continue to use the data produced by the Customer Community in the development of its services and in the long-term planning of its operations.
Kela’s customer insight is based on the wide variety of data we have on our customers. We combine data from customer feedback, customer experiences and the use of our various service channels.
In addition to the surveys conducted among the members of the Customer Community, Kela collects customer feedback through, for example, customer experience surveys and usability testing. You can give us feedback and suggestions at any time at www.kela.fi/give-feedback.