Providing support to vulnerable consumers as the cost-of-living crisis worsens

Natasha Bambridge explores consumer vulnerability as the cost-of-living crisis worsens.  

Many consumers may be falling into the trap of avoiding dealing with businesses and suppliers that have a responsibility to understand when their customers have become vulnerable in any way, financially, physically, or otherwise.

Vulnerability can affect any of us at any time and the pool of people who are vulnerable is ever increasing. In fact, the FCA completed a study that showed the number of people who are vulnerable had increased by 15% – so 27.7m people[1] identified themselves as having one or more characteristics of vulnerability.

This is a truly shocking statistic, so making sure that we can protect those people and deliver a service that enables them to access services is incredibly important and will just become more so over the next few years as the cost-of-living crisis worsens.

Vulnerability

Vulnerability is not always obvious and indeed someone may not identify themselves as being vulnerable. For example, in the standard ISO 22458 Consumer Vulnerability frontline staff are trained to understand risk factors, identifying signs of vulnerability that could make individuals susceptible to harm by affecting their ability to interact with organizations

The risk factors which could cause or contribute to a person being vulnerable and susceptible to harm are categorized as; personal characteristics, health and abilities, access and skills, life events and external conditions. For example, current economic conditions (external factors) combined with a relationship breakdown (life event) such as divorce can increase the risk of harm to the individual. By harm this can mean their ability to source information and make decisions.

Another example may be physical health such as an injury which could be short term combined with say lack of confidence using technology. While each on their own may not cause the individual to be vulnerable as they have coping mechanisms in place such as visiting a local library to access support for online services, their injury could mean they are homebound and therefore now unable to access that support.

Inclusive services

Businesses are needing to consider their consumer culture and strategy as a first step, ensuring the organization is designing and delivering services to be inclusive is not the job of just one dedicated team, it needs to be embedded into the organizational culture and led from the top.

Service offering and resources are key areas to review and organizations are having to consider the profile of the customer base, and then analyze whether their service is able to support customers’ needs, and following that are they resourced sufficiently for anticipated future demands.

It’s also essential that top management are reviewing and acting on management information both data driven and sourced via stakeholders, for example are they seeing an increase in delayed payments, are call wait times increasing. Organizations are then using this information to consider how support could be improved.

Assess the risk of consumers becoming vulnerable

Organizations must ensure the support is available to signpost people to external support networks. Critically, their staff must be trained to identify the risk factors and also the signs of vulnerability such as missing a payment and that they are trained to support a customer in sharing information in a non-intrusive style and not making assumptions.

For consumers experiencing vulnerability for the first time, it can be incredibly difficult to share such personal information, which is why it’s imperative that the person responding is skilled to navigate the conversation.

Organizations have a duty to provide both the frontline staff with the skills to do so as well as the supporting resources and options available to support the customer with the challenges they face. Consideration should also be taken on how to support those frontline staff who are taking calls which can be distressing, with additional wellbeing support may needing to be provided to reduce the risk of harm to the individual as well as the knock-on effect of staff absence which would further impact services.

Organizations that understand consumer vulnerability, and provide an inclusive and flexible approach, are better able to meet a diverse range of consumer needs, making it easier for consumers to access information, services and products, make good decisions and achieve positive outcomes.

For further information on the Inclusive Service Kitemark, visit the BSI website.

[1] https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/fca-launches-guidance-firms-fair-treatment-vulnerable-customers