Support Hub founder members discuss how we can support vulnerable customers

Chris Fitch: We’re at a really interesting and exciting point in the Support Hub journey. We’ve had a group of founding firms from financial services actually pushing forward to make this happen, and that’s an achievement in itself. It’s no longer an idea. It’s happening. What’s the most exciting point is it’s going to expand.

Steve Crabb: Today’s cross-industry summit, bringing people together, particularly from financial services, energy and water, to talk about how we can learn from each other and share best practice in supporting customers who need additional help. No customer is vulnerable just in terms of their water bill or their energy supply. Customers are holistic individuals and we need to recognise that.

Vanessa Northam: The people that come to StepChange are already acutely financially vulnerable. But what we see is around 51% declare an additional vulnerability. So tell me once and then tell me what you’re going to do with it is just an incredibly important concept.

Steve Donovan: Any of us can find ourselves needing support from an accessibility perspective or even find ourselves in a vulnerable situation. So it’s worth keeping in mind that that’s a big part of everyday life for a lot of people. If something like this is going to succeed, we need to make sure that we come together to provide solutions. We’re all tackling the same problem. So having a platform that allows customers again to be put first just means that then it makes it a lot easier for people.

Chris Fitch: Collaboration across different sectors, different firms is really, really important because it’s very simple. A consumer has multiple relationships with many, many organisations that are entwined in the fabric of our life.

Vanessa Northam: Consistency and collaboration, I think, are absolutely instrumental to help consumers engage. One of the things we hear time and time again at StepChange is, you know, if only they’d come to us and told us we could have helped them sooner. We know that sharing data, even at its most basic level, helps consumers in their times of need. So the Support Hub could be almost catalytic in its ability to transform and get that consistency, and collaboration is absolutely critical to that.

Steve Crabb: The more we can work together and understand the customer and their needs, the better we can meet their needs and prevent them from falling into harm.

Steve Donovan: It’s not about making profits, it’s about how do we just make sure that things are fair and work for everyone.

Chris Fitch: If we can make services more accessible, easy to use, if we can make changes and personalise the way in which services are delivered, that’s the best for the consumer and it’s actually best for everybody.