Aptean Respond
Inclusive Customer Service: Expert Insights on Supporting Vulnerable Customers
What if we told you that your customer service approach might be failing your most vulnerable customers?
Currently, 16% of customers feel their needs aren’t being met, according to Financial Conduct Authority data. And adults with one or more characteristics of vulnerability are more likely to report that customer support services don’t help them at all.
In an industry built on trust, can we afford such a gap? And what needs to change to provide better support for vulnerable customers?
In this eGuide, three industry experts will share their insights on how to enhance customer service for vulnerable individuals.
Their collective experience will challenge you to rethink your approach to customer support and take practical steps to create a more inclusive and responsive service environment.
Meet The Experts
Helen Pettifer Founder, Helen Pettifer Training
Helen has a background in customer service and management and is passionate about listening and supporting people, sharing information and building skills and confidence in others. Her experience as mother to a son with a rare condition and complex needs also highlighted the frustration, exhaustion and difficulty many people experience accessing customer support.
In 2016, she founded Helen Pettifer Training with the aim of helping organisations understand vulnerability drivers and how to embed good practice.
Martin Canwell
Account Executive, Aptean Respond
Martin has over 20 years of Financial Services experience across a range of disciplines with a large proportion focused on complaint operations. He helps Aptean Respond customers extract maximum value from their software by solving case management challenges including complaints, financial crime, remediation and GDPR/DSAR.
of UK Customer Service, Leading European bank
Head
Helen Pettifer on: Providing Exceptional Care for Vulnerable Customers
Helen Pettifer is an expert in training organisations to develop an awareness and understanding of their vulnerable customers, drawing from industry best practice and her own personal interactions.
We spoke to Helen about her experiences of vulnerability and her insights into how companies can support vulnerable customers and the staff who assist them.
What does it mean for a customer to be “vulnerable”, and how do their needs differ from other customers?
So many different things to me, a vulnerable customer is somebody who needs an extra level of care, whether that’s digitally or over the phone. They need time and compassion, and to interact with customer service agents who are kind, understanding, and will create a safe environment for them.
As with all customers, companies need to treat vulnerable customers as humans, not just account numbers. Vulnerable customers may be dealing with many obstacles in their lives and prioritising relationships other than the one they have with your business.
Does your passion for personal customer service come from your own experiences of vulnerability?
Yes – I trained as a ballet dancer, and my first experience of vulnerability was at 16 years old. I had a knee operation, and the surgeon told me I would never be a professional dancer.
I’m also passionate about customer care as my son has a rare condition and complex needs. I help him with his banking and managing his bills, so I experience first-hand the lack of support some customer service agents receive for dealing with vulnerable customer scenarios.
In many cases, companies aren’t training staff to ask the right questions. For example, I’m the third person on my son’s bank account, and I contacted his bank recently because he’d lost his debit card. The customer service agent started asking me about his vulnerability, saying the bank needed to know his health condition.
I knew they didn’t need that information – all they needed to know was how best to support my son, which is by always contacting me for anything related to his account.
What’s the impact of asking the wrong questions to vulnerable customers?
Recently, a company completed some vulnerability training with me. We analysed a real case where one of their customers had been going through cancer treatment, and a customer service agent had written about it on their record.
The next time that customer called, they spoke to a different agent, who asked them how their cancer treatment was going.
That kind of question is extremely sensitive and could upset the customer. More to the point, it’s not always relevant –having cancer doesn’t automatically mean someone should be classed as a vulnerable customer.
It’s really important to keep information factual and to only write down what’s relevant to the customer’s relationship with your business.
In your opinion, what are the best practices for communicating with vulnerable customers?
Connect with the customer as a human first before getting to the practical solution. Especially with complaints. You can’t resolve anything until your customer feels heard and cared for.
Show compassion. Vulnerable customers are often in a period of difficulty; they may have suffered a bereavement or just lost their job. They need kindness and empathy. A good customer service agent will listen to understand, rather than to respond.
If you’re unsure what to say to a customer, you can just say “I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say right now. But I can hear that you’re going through a really difficult time.” That’s much nicer than not acknowledging their pain or challenge.
Take care not to judge. Vulnerable customers may feel ashamed of their situation – for example, if they’re in a large amount of debt. When someone discloses something difficult, remember to thank them for trusting you with that information.
Finally, get explicit consent before recording any sensitive information about their circumstances.
Do you come across barriers that prevent companies from appropriately supporting vulnerable customers?
Not all companies have a vulnerable customer policy. You need a framework that will consider both the practical needs and the emotional needs of your customers.
A policy will help you to identify additional tools you may need to support vulnerable customers – for example, creating policy documents in braille and large print, or having the capacity to add third parties to customer accounts.
Another barrier (and my biggest bugbear) is when call centres time staff in conversation with vulnerable customers. Vulnerable customer calls should be identified and immediately removed from general metrics, because it can take much longer for these customers to communicate what they need.
If your customer service agent isn’t on the clock, they can really listen without rushing.
How can companies improve the way they support frontline staff helping vulnerable customers?
Compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma are becoming more prevalent in customer service teams. They’re hearing difficult stories from customers on a daily basis, and it weighs heavily on them.
One way to ease this pressure is to give employees a break from the phone, so they’re not always customer facing. Some of the companies I work with will rotate staff between phone work and admin work.
If someone’s handling a difficult call, allow them to step away and take a few minutes to gather themselves once they’ve hung up.
Finally, make sure you acknowledge the wonderful job your staff are doing to support vulnerable customers, often dealing with highly emotional situations. A small gesture of appreciation like leaving a bar of chocolate on their desk or sending them a note to say thank you for your work this week can make a huge difference to team morale.
A leading European bank on: Practical Steps to Support
Vulnerable Customers
The banking sector’s attitude to vulnerable customers continues to evolve, with industry leaders striving to provide best-in-class support to those in need of support.
Aptean spoke with the Head of UK Customer Service for a major European financial services group in Europe offering enhanced support to customers in vulnerable circumstances or situations including age-related or cognitive impairment, financial abuse, illness and addiction.
You’ve been in financial services for almost 30 years. How have approaches towards supporting vulnerable customers evolved over your career?
A: When I started out in the mid-1990s, vulnerability wasn’t even on the radar. The only time I came across non-standard customer service was power of attorney was for mortgage completions when an applicant was on tour with the armed services. We didn’t see a great deal of focus on vulnerability.
It wasn’t until the 2008 financial crisis that I saw more information coming from the regulator on topics like financial difficulty. As more people fell into financial hardship, which led more businesses to question how they were supporting customers affected by economic challenges.
We’ve seen attitudes to vulnerable customers evolve again in recent years following the 2020 pandemic and 2022 mini budget. As a sector, we’re getting much better at looking for someone who might have some form of vulnerability and considering how best to manage their case.
Now we’ve reached a point where we’re looking for vulnerability in every customer, because we’re more likely to be dealing with someone who has some form of vulnerability than not.
Vulnerability can mean many different things. How should approaches to vulnerable customers differ based on their circumstances?
A: It’s important to distinguish between temporary and permanent support. Some people will be vulnerable forever, while others may slip in and out of vulnerability.
Some companies struggle to determine when someone stops being a vulnerable customer and goes back into the nonvulnerability cohort. You can’t put a set time frame on how long a life or health event will impact somebody.
Bereavement is a prime example of this. Some people are very matter of fact and have the strength to deal with third parties within a couple of weeks. Others can take years to get over the loss of a loved one.
There’s also the challenge of customers who haven’t identified themselves as vulnerable. There are triggers that indicate vulnerability, like potential financial difficulty or life events, and companies may need to adjust their approach even if the customer hasn’t acknowledged they are vulnerable.
What programmes and initiatives can financial services companies introduce to enhance support for vulnerable customers?
A: Implementing a “tell us once” approach can be really helpful if customers have more than one product with your business. If they inform you about a circumstantial change for one product, update the information across all their accounts.
What about supporting frontline staff who are dealing with vulnerable customers?
A: Personally, I think giving people space after a tough call is one of the most helpful things you can do as an employer. Whether they need to make a coffee, get some fresh air, or just grab five minutes with a colleague to unload, it’s important to give staff that time.
There are also support mechanisms you can implement throughout your organisation, including third-party counsellors, healthcare providers and mental health first aiders.
For vulnerable customer conversations, you could also consider removing average call handling time targets or write-up time targets. The focus is then purely on supporting your customers. And if staff need time to catch their breath between calls, they’re not criticised or penalised.
Plus, it can be helpful to promote ongoing learning through call recordings. If you listen to a particularly challenging call from the past couple of weeks, reach out to that person to check if they’re okay and if they’ve had the right support.
How can technology improve support for vulnerable customers?
A: Technology can be a game-changer for supporting vulnerable customers. It allows you to configure our processes, give frontline teams better access to workflow systems, and improve tracking of customer interactions.
Frontline teams can track where complaints, data rights requests and bereavement cases are in the process. This visibility removes a lot of duplicate activity and provides a joined-up customer service.
You can also use scan data on each customer and flag potential vulnerability, to identify when you need to take extra care.
How do you think the framework for vulnerable customers will evolve in the future?
A: It’s an area that’s never going to stand still. It will always evolve, and that’s the way it should be. Look at mental health support now compared to where we were five or six years ago, for example.
The financial services industry needs to focus on consistency and managing data on vulnerable customers to influence future decisions.
Martin Canwell on: Using Technology to Support Vulnerable Customers
Martin Canwell is a customer service technology expert. As a key member of the Aptean Respond team, he helps organisations implement specialist solutions that streamline the process of identifying vulnerable individuals and developing tailored support strategies.
In our final Q&A, Martin shares his insights on how technology and data analytics can empower companies to recognise and support vulnerable customers, creating a more inclusive and compassionate approach to customer service.
What are the practical challenges companies face when trying to support vulnerable customers?
One of the main challenges companies wrestle with is how to identify customers as being vulnerable. The customer may not recognise themselves as vulnerable or proactively share details about themselves that give you a full picture of their situation.
Customer service teams need to create processes, whether online or in telephone conversations, that enable them to capture relevant information that suggests a customer might be vulnerable.
Another key challenge is determining how and when to apply the definition of vulnerability. Some customers are permanently vulnerable, but for others it could be a temporary issue. So it’s vital to keep customer information up to date in your systems so your frontline staff can accurately communicate with them.
How can companies ensure they have a comprehensive record of each customer’s vulnerabilities?
It’s vital to have a single version of the truth. If a customer reveals something about themselves that suggests a level of vulnerability, they shouldn’t have to repeat that information on every call. Technology can help you capture this data.
For example, having a complaints management system with vulnerability detection capabilities can help your business to identify customers that may require additional support during the course of your interactions. This information can impact the way their case is handled and even the complaint decision.
How does vulnerability detection software work and what kind of vulnerabilities will it look for?
Vulnerability detection software analyses the free text fields captured by the handler in your complaints management system. It will check for the use of certain words or phrases which could note customer vulnerability –terms related to problems like financial distress, health issues, changes in circumstances such as job loss, lack of mental capacity, and signs of stress and distress.
This process provides an added level of due diligence on top of relying solely on the call handler, and it can speed up the support process.
Flagging key words that could indicate customer vulnerability allows the case handler to take the case through a slightly different process and consider the customer’s unique circumstances. They might prioritise the case differently – for instance, customers with financial harm might need their case looked at more quickly.
How can vulnerability data be used to improve product and service design?
Inclusive design is so important to supporting the needs of vulnerable customers. Companies should be developing products and processes that include everyone, rather than building exceptions for those who don’t fit the average.
Vulnerability data helps companies to become more inclusive, as you can understand more about the types of customers in your database and the impact of the decisions you’re making on those customers.
Creating a data-driven feedback loop is crucial for developing more inclusive offerings. You can look at your percentage of vulnerable versus non-vulnerable customers, for example, and segment that data to identify issues vulnerable customers are experiencing with a particular product or communication.
Since the advent of Consumer Duty, many companies have changed their reporting and now look at their data more holistically to understand the impact of their actions and decisions. This holistic approach is shaping products, processes and the way information is communicated to customers to ensure the right outcomes for everyone.
When we spoke to Helen Pettifer, she urged companies to provide more support for employees communicating with vulnerable customers. How can technology help to ease the mental load being placed on customer service agents?
Vulnerability data helps you understand what your colleagues are being exposed to. Complaints can be a difficult space to work in, and there’s an added layer of consideration when you’re dealing with vulnerable customers.
Complaints management technology is a vital tool for supporting frontline staff dealing with vulnerable customers. They can use data and workflows to determine if additional knowledge, support or specialist resources are needed to handle more complex customer cases. It’s especially important to give people this digital framework if they’re working remotely.
The key to supporting vulnerable customers through technology is to implement specialist systems, and to give customer service agents right training and support to use these systems effectively.
Next Steps for Enhancing Vulnerable Customer Support
If you’d like more insights on helping vulnerable customers…
Download our whitepaper on customer experience excellence as standard or read our blog post on how can complaints drive business accountability?
If you’re interested in using technology to enhance vulnerable customer support…
Aptean Respond is a combined complaints management, compliance and process improvement platform.
Our software simplifies complaints handling, keeps detailed case records and captures valuable data insights—so you can resolve complaints quicker, reduce your risk of regulatory referral and deliver outstanding customer service.
Aptean Respond includes Consumer Vulnerability Detection capabilities. Our software automatically scans inbound customer communications for signs of potential vulnerability that might otherwise be missed during the case handling process.
Our built-in text analytics will then flag vulnerability markers with your frontline staff, so they can assess whether a different approach is needed to support that customer.
Book a no-obligation Aptean Respond demo to find out more.
Aptean is one of the world’s leading providers of purpose-built, industry-specific software that helps manufacturers and distributors effectively run and grow their businesses. With both cloud and on-premise deployment options, Aptean’s products, services and unmatched expertise help businesses of all sizes to be Ready for What’s Next, Now®. Aptean is headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia and has offices in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
To learn more about Aptean and the markets we serve, visit www.aptean.com.