Simplifying Consumer Duty obligations by design: Linking CX and Operations using AI

Published 06/12/24 under:

Sharing all the killer tips and insights from the latest in a series of Kerv financial services events, this blog describes how – with the right contact centre strategy – UK financial firms can safely navigate Consumer Duty complexities and avoid a world of pain.

Consumer Duty responsibilities 

The latest Consumer Duty regulations signal a major step-up and change in buyer protection philosophy – replacing guidance with enforceable rules clearly setting out the behaviours the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) expects to see. As a result, firms can now be held accountable if they are not deemed to be:

• Acting in good faith towards consumers.
• Avoiding foreseeable harm to them.
• Enabling and supporting them to pursue their financial objectives.

Crucially, the onus is on firms to show that they provide good outcomes in four areas:

1. Outcome 1: Product and services
   • Must have evidential reason to be confident they will meet a tangible need of a clearly identified market, backed by solid internal review and governance capabilities.
2. Outcome 2: Price and value
   • Only release products and services that demonstratively provide value, in terms of what consumers pay and receive in return (and are able to measure and correct gaps).
3. Outcome 3: Consumer understanding
   • Ensure consumers know what they really need to know – when they need to know it – in order to make good decisions (as opposed to simply churning out information).
4. Outcome 4: Consumer support
   • Show service levels and support are readily available in line with consumer expectations and provide good outcomes – both in terms of interactions and products.

Moreover, the regulator is keen to understand how firms have proactively interpreted and applied the rules to their own products, services and operations – not to wait for FCA guidance or intervention.

What that means for UK financial services organisations  

The ability to identify the extent to which good outcomes are being achieved is arguably the most significant challenge posed.

Firms are actively looking to improve management information to drive better decision-making and intervention, regarding the design and operation of their products and services. Although they know that much of that data flows back and forth across the contact centre, many are not correctly set-up to capture deeper understanding across all points of the customer journey.

New Consumer Duty laws have massively amplified these challenges, which left unchecked can only weaken loyalty and increase customer churn.

Compliance by contact centre design 

The good news is that Kerv and Genesys are investing heavily to make sure financial services clients receive the right level of support when it comes to meeting their Consumer Duty obligations.

That invariably means overcoming legacy constraints caused by disconnected on-premises systems, siloed communications, manual processes and inadequately equipped employees. All of which makes it harder to extract and analyse real time data.

Well-versed in solving such issues, Kerv specialists help our clients transition to a more effective ‘compliance by design’ approach. One that embeds Consumer Duty requirements throughout daily contact centre operations by:

• Unifying cross-channel conversations and data on one Genesys Cloud platform.
• Detecting potentially vulnerable customers with speech and data analytics.
• Supporting employees with compliant scripts, next-based actions and automated note-taking.
• Increasing first contact resolutions with AI-powered bots, predictive routing and knowledge management.
• Reducing employee effort with simple CRM and back office system integration.
• Flagging service bottlenecks and broken and processes with journey analytics.
• Boosting employee engagement and wellbeing with gamification tools and 400+ AppFoundry plug-in solutions.

Case Study – Just Group

Just Group are a great example of financial services adapting technology and processes to achieve Consumer Duty best practice. With around 12,000 staff and 650,000 UK customers, the retirement specialist places customers at the heart of everything it does – assisted by Genesys Cloud, seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM.

Delivered as a fully managed service by Kerv, the solution tightly maps to the four good outcome areas as defined by the FCA. For example, by using new features like speech and text analytics to ensure customers fully understand products and risks, carefully explained through tailored advice and support to fit individual circumstances.

Insights from call recordings are now captured to identify trends and journey improvements for different customer groups. Just Group also use key phrase search tools to identify vulnerable callers, ensuring they are being treated fairly and interactions are made as easy as possible.

In addition, by introducing sentiment analysis, its dedicated CX team is able to show when customers have a positive emotional experience and come away feeling they’re got their desired outcome.

Going forward, customers will be able to complete identity verification (ID&V) checks via voice bots. Once connected, employees can help them straight away knowing they’re talking to the right person and safely releasing information.

Other plans include deploying Genesys Agent Copilot, ensuring consistent note-taking and wrap-up codes, while releasing employees to focus on listening. By combining this approach with a centralised Knowledge Management library, Just Group expects to significantly reduce employee onboarding and customer waiting time.

How Kerv and Genesys can help 

As the longest standing Genesys Cloud partner in EMEA, with the most successful deployments, Kerv Experience continues to help clients simplify regulatory requirements and boost the customer and employee experience. To learn more, please get in touch.