It Is All About The Questions…

By Harry Cruickshank

One thing is certain. As firms work through the requirements of the FCA’s Consumer Duty, gathering feedback that improves their customer insight, and should be used to raise performance, must be at the heart of any effective action plan. Missing or low-quality data will undermine any efforts to deliver the FCA’s prescribed outcomes.

But as Bananarama once sang: “It’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it.”

Asking the right questions at the right time in the right way is the key. They need to be clear, without ambiguity or bias and pitched appropriately, depending on the level of financial acuity of the customer. If not, there is a risk they will not be understood, or that you may not be given the feedback you need. Most vital of all, your questions must be based on what matters to your customers, not based on what YOU think matters to them. This basic error is made by 90% of firms. Finding out what matters to customer is the first step on your journey. It is best done by asking them for their expectations. This is a qualitative step and takes the form of one carefully worded question.

Next, assuming you now know, objectively, what they expect, you can ask questions inviting them to score your performance against their expectations. From this quantitative step, you can obtain performance gap scores, and these can prioritise where you need to invest in improvements that will rapidly please consumers.

If you do this effectively, it will help support your plans for Consumer Duty compliance. You will also reveal customer insights that deliver an opportunity to transform your business and results. Supported by effective analysis, this will help you fine tune your business processes and operations, so that over time you steadily improve your firm’s performance and customer outcomes.

Although Consumer Duty is focused on customer outcomes, we all know that employee experience and customer experience are inextricably linked. As you go through the complex process of achieving compliance, do not forget to ask questions of your employees too. If something is not working, and the result is a failure to deliver the target customer outcomes, then it is likely that your own people will know it is flawed and have innovative ideas to contribute to improvements. If you engage them fully in the project, this will help to drive important internal conversations and embed the cultural changes necessary to ensure compliance is not only achieved but maintained.