While technology offers many opportunities in the quest to deliver a more proactive and efficient customer experience, it’s the human interactions between brands and their customers that often make the difference, writes Oli Freestone, Institute Lead at Capita.

As summer draws to a close, many of the short-term measures put in place to help UK citizens and businesses to get through the Coronavirus pandemic are also ending.

We’ve just commissioned some independent research into “Fairness in Collections” to gain a deeper insight into the issues facing people who are in debt.

The pandemic isn’t only affecting us as individuals – it’s affecting us as societies and economies too.

Research done over the past few years has shown that having people of different genders, ethnicities, sexual orientations, ages and physical and mental abilities within your organisation is good for all sorts of things from innovation and creativity to engagement and retention.

As a market leader in debt management, we are witnessing first-hand the devastating financial impact Covid-19 is having on the personal finances of so many people.

The utility industry has faced consistent challenges with customer satisfaction, and is rated lower than the UK average for transparency, customer ethos and emotional connection.

For many people, the moment of truth with an organisation is when things go wrong - for example, when they fall behind on loan repayments.

Can debt really be considered good? And do we need more of it? At Tortoise Media’s recent ‘The Future of Money’ event I was invited to consider this alongside finance coach and author of Black Girl Finance, Selina Flavius, and the co-author of Angrynomics, Eric Lonergan.

Ricky Alfred, Capita Customer Management’s Head of Responsible Business, reflects on the need to support vulnerable customers - and how organisations, customer service agents and Capita can all make a difference.