Samaritans trains Revolut support agents to better spot and support vulnerable customers

We’re always looking to improve in everything we do and see how we can better support our customers. So recently our customer support team took part in training sessions run by Samaritans, a charity that offers listening and support to those in need.

Revolut’s customer support team embarked upon a training workshop with a Learning & Development trainer from Samaritans. We undertook this course to further develop our emotional support skills so we can better meet the needs of our customers, who may be experiencing additional hardships or difficulties during this uncertain time.

Day 1

The first day of training focused on further developing our emotional support skills through encouraging open and honest communication through effective listening.

• We use tools provided by Samaritans to encourage open communication
• We discussed how to spot vulnerable customers and the different methods to assist the various kinds of vulnerabilities
• We covered the "Emotional Health Scale" which shows how a combination of events can contribute to someone being in a vulnerable situation, people’s lives may be more complex and layered than we may initially assume  e.g. a customer could be suffering from financial issues but this may be as a result of them losing their job.
  

Day 2

On day two, we concentrated on clear and constructive interactions, by following that age old phrase ‘put yourself in a someone else's shoes’

• We thought about the issues our customers are likely to face to ensure we can better understand their needs
• We learnt to throw our assumptions away, rely on what we are being told to us and to check anything that isn’t clear or obvious
• We covered the barriers to listening and went through the five levels of listening.
  

Day 3

During the last day, the task was to work on the tricky bits, very difficult conversations.

• We went through how to de-escalate issues and work with customers to help alleviate problems
• We also ran through role playing interactions on what we learnt to make sure we knew how to use the experience from the training we received in the real world.
  

Revoluters that participated in this training said they would put these skills into practice by applying ‘more active listening’ and they called it 'mind-changing'.

This month one of our Vulnerable Customers champions in our support team demonstrated some of the skills learnt during the workshop to help a vulnerable customer who was feeling shocked, scared, unprotected and was dealing with negative thoughts. Our support agent spent time on the phone with the customer and calmly applied some recently learned techniques to help resolve the issue. We followed up with this customer a couple of days later to ensure that they were feeling better and checked if we could do anything to provide further support.

We advise all customers to take care of yourself both mentally and physically, mental health is just as important as physical health. We published a blog with useful advice for those experiencing mental health and money worries. And if you are struggling to cope you can contact Samaritans on 116 123 or by email on jo@samaritans.co.uk.