In today’s increasingly complex financial service environment, organisations are facing new and evolving challenges. The rising cost of living has significantly shifted the way customers interact, leading to more emotionally charged, complex and often prolonged vulnerabilities. Recognising this shift, one of our members, CA Auto Finance UK, took proactive steps to equip their teams with the tools, confidence and consistency needed to meet these demands, turning to The Institute’s ‘Handling Challenging Customer Interactions’ and ‘Introduction to Vulnerable Customers’ workshops.
CA Auto Finance UK, which had already embedded a strong training and development culture across its operations, noticed a growing number of more difficult conversations emerging in their contact centre. Through routine quality checks, it became evident that teams were finding it harder to get to the heart of customer concerns, particularly when dealing with longer-term vulnerabilities.
“Previously, we might have seen short-term vulnerability. But this is different” – said Kelly Manners, Senior Customer Operations Manager. Over the course of two weeks, 75 colleagues from across a number of customer facing departments took part in The Institute’s workshops. Team leaders and managers also joined the sessions, which provided an added layer of insight into how their teams were approaching difficult conversations.
While the organisation already enjoyed strong customer satisfaction and NPS scores, this training wasn’t about improving those metrics, it was about protecting them. “We wanted to get ahead, making sure our teams felt confident and capable, not just now, but as the landscape continued to change,” said Kelly.
Feedback from participants highlighted several standout benefits. Many valued the opportunity to revisit foundational skills in a real-world, practical context. Others emphasised the importance of having examples and scenarios that mirrored the nature of their own customer interactions.
By mixing participants across departments, the training also helped break down silos, foster greater collaboration and build a deeper understanding of the end-to-end customer journey.
Participants’ qualitative written feedback highlighted the value and relevance of the sessions, with comments such as: “Excellent course… delivered in an engaging and informative way,” “It sparked a lot of helpful discussion… gave an awareness of vulnerability internally as well as externally,” and “The trainer was fantastic -very engaging and relatable.”
Through a post-course survey, confidence ratings also increased from 7.1 to 9.3 after the Introduction to Vulnerable Customers training, and from 8.0 to 9.1 following the Handling Challenging Customer Interactions session.
Crucially, the independence and credibility of The Institute’s training helped boost agents’ confidence. “Because it was delivered by The Institute, it gave our teams reassurance that they were being equipped with best practice, particularly in situations where the right customer outcome isn’t always the easiest one.”
With eyes now set on achieving ServiceMark accreditation, CA Auto Finance UK continues to demonstrate what it means to empower their teams in a changing world.
