Best practice guide:
1
Customer consultation methods
About these guides
We understand that while there can be common aspects, organisations work in different ways and
what works for one, might not fit so well with another. These guides are written as an example of
what best practice might look like in your organisation, but it may be that you have to adjust what is
recommended to accommodate your particular circumstances.
Similarly the guides do not include detailed technical information as this would tie them to a specific
technology or set of circumstances. Instead the guides convey important principals and approaches
that can be applied in any industry and using any technology. Where appropriate the guides
reference other sites and resources which contain more technical detail at the time of publication/last
review.
Introduction
Technology Taskforce members recognise the power of listening and acting on
customer feedback in order to improve the customers’ experience, including
those who are disabled or older. By listening, learning and acting, organisations
can effectively understand the needs of their customers and create an open
dialogue that will help to ensure that customers’
needs and feedback are acted upon.
Although we have many accessibility experts working with them,
we know that because everyone experiences disability differently, regular consultation with those
who will actually use services and products produces better results. What actual customers think of
products and services and any changes planned, can help shape the outcome more positively.
By creating more inclusive product offerings that better meet the needs of more demanding customer
segments, technology taskforce members have found that this improves the customer experience
and choice for ‘all’ customers.
The outcome is that organisations become better at designing and delivering inclusive and
accessible products, services and distribution channels. Disabled and/or elderly customers feel
valued, welcomed, anticipated and accommodated when using our members’ products and services.
The rest of this document looks at how one of our members, Barclays Bank, approaches customer
consultation, the successes they’ve had and presents a case study that illustrates the work they’ve
done.
Susan Scott-Parker, Chief Executive and Founder of Business Disability Forum
Authors:
Contributors:
Editors:
Paul Smyth, [email protected]
Sean Smith OBE, HMRC
Lucy Ruck and Bela Gor
Best practice guide: Customer consultation methods | Version 1.0 | December 2014
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Customer surveys: Barclays used a panel of
disabled individuals rather than reaching out
to disabled Barclays’ customers; this
removed any potential bias caused by using
their own customers solely and directly.
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Engaging customers
Barclays uses a range of tools and methods to consult with and obtain feedback from disabled and
elderly customers – some pro-active and others reactive. Similarly, some methods focus on their
existing propositions, whereas others are centred around building new, accessible services.
This document covers the following methods:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Customer surveys
‘Your Bank’ website (an online suggestions box)
Public commitment / external statement of intent
User testing of products and services
Complaints investigations & root cause analysis
On-going engagement with key external charity partners
Social media channels
1. Customer surveys
In 2013 Barclays commissioned independent research with a focus on Accessible Banking which was
targeted at disabled bank customers. They obtained a panel of disabled retail bank customers with a
mix of ages and abilities, and ensured that the online survey platform itself was as accessible as
possible – both in terms of simple user interface and plain English questions, as well as ensuring
technical accessibility of the site with assistive technologies.
The survey included a range of quantitative and qualitative responses, including what banking
channels a respondent used, how they rated their bank’s people, premises, products and processes,
what they found difficult and any suggested improvements. Communication channels, choice and
preferences were also covered.
For the purposes of this accessible banking survey, Barclays chose to go down an external route,
using a panel of disabled individuals rather than identifying and reaching out to disabled Barclays
customers. This gave them an opportunity to remove any potential biases by using their own
customers solely and directly. It also allowed them to better understand what customers of a range of
financial service providers thought about accessibility and to understand how much they knew about
the work that we’ve already done.
A Net Promoter Score (NPS) standard methodology was also applied, asking respondents what
financial institution they banked with and whether they would recommend their banks’ services to
others.
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"Based on the disability category of a
customer they were likely to have a differing
perception of their bank… Hearing & speechimpaired customers had a negative
experience for instance…"
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Summary findings:
 With regards to banking overall, disabled customers had a more negative experience (i.e. NPS
rating) than non-disabled customers, highlighting that their additional needs and access
requirements were not currently being adequately met.
 Based on the disability category of a customer they were likely to have a differing perception of
their bank. Hearing & speech-impaired customers had a negative experience for instance (due
to inaccessible telephone banking and limited alternatives) whereas visually impaired
customers had more positive perceptions towards Barclays in particular. This was great
feedback as it served to demonstrate that recent enhancements to the accessibility of their
services (e.g. talking cash machines and high visibility debit cards) were resulting in a direct
knock-on impact of higher customer satisfaction scores.
 More disability confidence / awareness training was highlighted across all banks and by all
disability groups. So too were issues around alternative formats, communication preferences
and how disabled customer flags or notes were recorded and used.
2. 'Your Bank’ website
The Barclays Your Bank (https://www.yourbank.barclays.co.uk) web portal allows customers to
suggest improvements to Barclays services, products and business as usual processes on an ongoing basis. This provides consistency and standardisation of how suggestions are collated and
prioritised from customers in addition to existing customer complaints processes.
The website utilises a ‘You said – we did’ approach as an active way of listening and responding to
customer feedback. This serves to provide proof points of how customer suggestions are listened to,
acted on to improve services and then played back on the Your Bank website via a series of
engaging videos to encourage more suggestions and evidence that they create change.
The site also includes several multiple choice quick votes that include accessibility, to allow them to
keep gathering opinion. The most popular suggestions are highlighted and the ‘Ideas brought to life’
page shows several videos, many relating to accessibility. These include talking cash machines, age
simulation suits, high visibility debit cards and SignVideo virtual sign language interpreter service
offerings. The videos are helpful in showcasing the accessibility agenda at external events too.
3. Public commitment / external statement of intent
In 2011, Barclays signed up to the Business Disability Forum’s Accessible Technology Charter. In
doing so they made a public commitment around their desire to design, implement and promote
accessible technology. However they realised that there was a need to make a similar public
commitment directly to their customers too, in terms of the broader accessibility agenda and their
long-term commitment towards accessible service and inclusive design. With the support of our
Group Chairman and Group CEO they announced in mid-2013 their accessibility statement to
customers.
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"Barclays external accessibility statement can
be found on their website… The statement
sets out their overall mission or vision with
regards to accessibility programmes
internally"
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Their external accessibility statement can be found on their website
(http://www.barclays.co.uk/Accessibility/Barclaysaccessibilitystatement/P1242641724754) and it
serves to set out and demonstrate that they are serious and committed with regards to meeting
disabled and elderly customers’ needs. The statement was written in such a way as to highlight some
of the accessibility related initiatives that they have achieved and some of the activities that they are
working towards. Barclays emphasised that they are at the beginning of their accessibility journey
and that they cannot improve their services without the input and feedback from charities and
customers.
The external statement helps to set out their overall mission or vision with regards to accessibility
which can be referenced when they are speaking to external charities or considering new change
programmes internally. The fact that it has the endorsement of Group executives also helps to
highlight the importance placed in this agenda.
4. User testing of products and services
Barclays has a range of access consultants, charity partners and disabled user panels that are drawn
on periodically to help test existing services or to assist in the design, build and testing of new
services. As part of their internal accessibility design standards used by project teams, the use of
diverse user testing with external experts is recommended, in particular for material change
programmes that will directly impact customers.
Some recent examples would be including disabled customers in the user testing of new bank branch
refurbishment designs, for new online banking webpages usability and in the conceptual design of
new smart cash machines. These sessions are usually structured in the form of focus groups,
gathering opinions and feedback on the ease of access of a particular banking activity or service.
5. Complaints investigations & root cause analysis
In a similar way to other banks, Barclays has a robust, formal customer complaints process for
customers who have had a negative experience of our banking services. At Barclays, when
complaints are raised, they are categorised up by frontline staff and they have an ‘accessibility /
disability’ related category. This is not perfect as there is still an inherent difficulty of differentiating
between a generic complaint from a disabled customer versus an accessibility complaint from a
disabled customer but nevertheless it is helpful to collate and review these complaints.
If customer complaints are tagged against the ‘accessibility / disability’ category then under the
current process they are given a high priority and passed to a single Head Office complaints team to
deal with and respond to. This central team can then bring in relevant internal experts when
reviewing and resolving the complaint.
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Did you know?
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97%
of Barclays branches have level access
Barclays regularly analyse all accessibility related complaints to identify common themes where they
need to focus their efforts. For instance, the vast majority (97%) of their branches have level access
but from the complaints data they have found a number of instances whereby a branch becomes
temporarily inaccessible during a short-term building refurbishment. They have therefore looked into
ways of how customer frustrations could be minimised by informing the local community in advance,
as well as agreeing temporary work-arounds with frontline staff of how they could accommodate
disabled customers over the refurbishment period.
6. On-going engagement with key external charity partners
In order to understand the needs of disabled customers, Barclays regularly meets with key disability
charity partners. This provides an opportunity for the charities to describe their members’ top
challenges and suggestions as well as for Barclays to update the charity on what recent initiatives we
have launched or enhanced that might make lives easier for the communities that the charity
represents. These scheduled meetings are therefore mutually beneficial, and constructive criticism
from their charity partners help keep them honest.
7. Social media channels
An emerging trend is to use social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook to publicise
accessibility support, services and new enhancements as they are launched. Social media can be an
effective tool in targeting specific customer segments with information and announcements as well as
similarly collating feedback on customers’ views and experiences of their services.
Follow them on twitter – @BarclaysAccess
High visibility debit cards: case study
High visibility debit cards were created for customers with visual impairments or print difficulties,
making it easier for them to identify their card, read the card details and orientate the card the right
way within cash machines or CHIP & PIN devices. Find out how they came about…
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Did you know?
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Customers with visual impairments can find
non-contrasting colours difficult to
distinguish – especially when at a small size.
One of Barclays success stories for 2013 was their high visibility debit card rollout. This was
developed from the ingenuity of one of their branch staff, when a visually impaired customer had
difficulty using his debit card and came to ask for assistance.
Personalised debit cards were a product Barclays already offered to all customers, allowing them to
upload a photo of their choice, or select an existing image from an online library to go on their debit
card. Through this online service, the branch personal banker created a bright green debit card by
uploading a photograph of the colour, so the visually impaired customer could tell it apart from his
other cards and read the details more easily.
Building on this idea, Barclays engaged customers and charities externally as well as leveraging the
Reach disability colleague network internally in iteratively refining a range of high visibility cards with
high contrast markings. The designs include arrows and markings showing which way to insert the
card into an ATM, and they continue to update and improve these designs in partnership with the
RNIB, dyslexia charities and feedback from customers.
These designs have been added into the existing library of images within their personalised debit
card ordering website for any customer to choose, not just those with impairments.
Customers with visual impairments can find non-contrasting colours difficult to distinguish –
especially when at a small size. Most people have more than one card and it may not be obvious
which way to insert it into an ATM or other device. Customers with print difficulties such as dyslexia
may also find it difficult to read their card details against a multi-coloured background. These cards
cater for the needs of these customers as well as anyone who prefers to have a single colour, easy to
recognise card.
This is a great example of where customer feedback and thinking differently can lead to new ideas,
products and services. It also shows that inclusivity can lead to better services for all customers.
They are not stopping here and are continuously working with disability charities and customers to
further refine and enhance their high visibility card offerings over time – such as the latest iteration
with tactile notches.
www.technologytaskforce.org
Technology Taskforce is committed to ensuring that all its products and services are as accessible as
possible to everyone, including disabled people. If you wish to discuss anything with regard to
accessibility of this document please contact us.
Registered charity no: 1018463.
Registered Office: Nutmeg House, 60 Gainsford Street, London SE1 2NY.
Registered in England under Company No. 2603700
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