With worldwide inflation rates as high as 10%, the cost of living is spiking drastically for a lot of people. So, now is a great time to address a pocket of customers that’s growing with this financial strain: vulnerable customers.
Vulnerable customers face circumstances that only add to these challenging times, so they often need special attention and understanding from us.
At Revolut we never settle on our goal to Deliver WOW. We want to help our customers improve their financial health, making financial services fair and accessible for all. A huge part of this is making sure the customer support we provide meets the needs of customers with signs of vulnerability.
Who are vulnerable customers?
Vulnerable customers are facing either temporary or permanent personal situations and circumstances that put them at increased risk if a company doesn’t provide an appropriate level of care and understanding.
Many situations can lead to a customer becoming vulnerable. But we can break the term down into four key categories:
- Health – mental or physical disabilities, illness, injury, etc.
- Life events – bereavement, retirement, abuse, caring responsibilities, etc.
- Resilience – low or unstable income, overindebtedness, unemployment, etc.
- Capabilities – learning difficulties, low financial knowledge, etc.
At Revolut Support, it’s our job to identify the warning signs of vulnerable customers so we can put these customers first and provide any extra help they may need. As their lives become unsteady or uncertain, we’ll do all that we can to alleviate their challenges.
How do we identify vulnerable customers?
The first step in providing for the needs of vulnerable customers is making sure we’re aware of which customers may be vulnerable. But how do we do this? To start, we use the four categories mentioned above to identify customers and track their overall wellbeing.
We may not know every detail of a customer’s life, but we do use secure machine learning to flag Revolut app activity that might correspond with vulnerability. We also pay close attention to all customer communications to spot any signs of vulnerability. Once we notice that a customer may be at risk based on our specific guidance, we can shift our approach accordingly.
On top of the above approach, we let our customers have their say. We’ve sent out surveys to see how our customers are doing and check in with their overall wellbeing. The survey has also helped us identify how we could alter the way we handle these customers to better support them.
Information on vulnerability is processed in a secure way as per Revolut Privacy Policy.
How are we helping vulnerable customers at Revolut?
We’ve trained each member of our support team to spot and assist vulnerable customers. So when customers reach out to our team, they can have peace of mind knowing that that agent knows exactly how to handle delicate situations, keep an open mind, and talk to customers with care.
As soon as our team identifies vulnerabilities in a customer, they make that person their top priority and adapt their approach to fit the particular situation. Our agents will take time to listen to the needs of vulnerable customers and take those needs into account when offering practical and realistic solutions.
We also have a team of vulnerability champions that can offer more tailored support when a customer’s needs go beyond our support team’s vulnerability training. So our lines of support have each customer’s unique circumstances covered.
Recently, we’ve uplifted our support to better help vulnerable customers. Our agents can reach out to vulnerable customers by phone, which we can trigger through the in-app chat. With this option, customers can talk to agents directly and reduce any communication barriers of the in-app conversation. We hope this added support helps vulnerable customers feel more heard and supported by our team.
Please note that right now, our phone support is only available to vulnerable customers.
Building a Community to support all Revolut customers
At Revolut, we’re all ears. We believe there’s always room for improvement. So, if you have any further suggestions or feedback on how we can best support vulnerable customers, please share them with us below 
