The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) wants firms to put themselves in their customers’ shoes in what is being described as ‘seismic shift’ in UK consumer protection regulation. In the newly announced Consumer Duty, by July 2023 firms are required to “act to deliver good outcomes for financial retail customers” with rising expectations around the ability to demonstrate the governance of products and services, fair price and value, increased consumer understanding, and better consumer support. And speaking of outcomes, the onus is not just on delivering fair outcomes, but delivering good outcomes which are the result of firms proactively seeking to deliver them.

For some firms, the new regulation echoes some of the outcomes expected in the evolutionary Treating Customers Fairly Act. But in reality, putting customers at the heart of Consumer Duty means firms are expected to truly understand a consumer’s end-to-end journey – from product design to post-sale support - with a granular analysis of enterprise-wide interactions.

As the FCA moves towards data and advanced analytics to enhance regulatory compliance and consumer outcomes, many firms may need to transition away from existing company-growth focused standards and fully embed the duty in their governance structure and decision-making.

The Duty makes it clear that Senior Management and equivalent governing bodies operating on board level have greater responsibility in ensuring the duty is rooted within the firm, but Senior Managers must take accountability for the consumer outcomes under the Senior Managers and Certification Regime. The FCA also expect firms to have a champion (ideally a Non-Executive Director) - who along with the Chair and the CEO - ensures that the Duty is being discussed regularly and raised frequently in relevant discussions.

Finally, it will be of critical importance for firms to be able to demonstrate compliance by data-driven record keeping with the reasons behind making key decisions referenced to obligations under the Consumer Duty to avoid non-compliant penalties.

With its comprehensive monitoring and analytics capabilities, data-driven conversational intelligence has already been propelling itself into the spotlight as an essential tool for maintaining compliance and uncovering rich insights to understand and augment the customer journey.

The Consumer Duty provides firms with a springboard to the broader outcomes available through speech analytics by adding value to both customer service, agent experience, training, and governance disciplines. Based on a survey conducted earlier this year, 97%* of organisations are planning on implementing speech analytics within the next three to five years, and the ability for speech analytics to support compliance with the Consumer Duty is likely to accelerate timescales and bolster business cases for the adoption of this technology.

Automating the analysis of all your customer interactions means you can meet Consumer Duty requirements across several key areas:

Ensure the fair treatment of vulnerable customers by capturing, monitoring and addressing issues as they emerge. This provides you with a better understanding of how vulnerable customer requirements change over time to drive service and product improvements.

Nurture and coach agents with targeted insights and learn from highest performing agents. Score each agent and team based on the agent’s impact and on the call difficulty, and provide succinct, actionable information that tells you what your call center team is doing right – and what support is needed to fix it.

Moving from person-centric supervision to data-first evidence, use dashboards to demonstrate an improved understanding of customer outcomes, the factors that affect them over time, and what remedial action has been taken so you are ready for the regulator.

Understand the cause of customer complaints and not just the symptoms by using voice data to measure customer satisfaction, risk, agent behaviours, and identify areas of friction in the customer journey. These insights can drive business outcomes such as improved customer loyalty.

Get a score on 100% of customer conversations. By monitoring all interactions - regardless of channel - firms will be able to see which form of communication is most effective and make better decisions on the way they interact with customers and in doing so, meet Duty expectations.

Utilising rich audio and metadata, configure chosen sets of conversational data, playback audio for accurate analysis, and track how your QA efforts are positively impacting your Consumer Duty obligations to significantly improve QA efficiencies.

The Duty makes it clear for firms that it’s no longer enough for them to just review high-level reports and feedback without truly understanding how customers are responding to their processes and what their outcomes are. Open access to voice data to power speech analytics provides the potential for better learning because voice data often holds the key to understanding the customer at scale.

By embedding voice-AI in the heart of customer operations, firms are presented with a broader future-proofing opportunity to improve their processes, power business growth, and ensure they meet a wide-range of regulatory responsibilities.

*Being Human Report, Red Box 2022