Capita’s white paper explores how focusing on empathy, kindness and sincerity will equip organisations to help their most vulnerable customers.

We’re all now feeling the effects of ‘Covid debt’: physical, mental – and, increasingly, financial.

The consumer desire for a brighter Christmas amidst continuing Covid-19 restrictions has seen a sharp rise in ‘buy now pay later’ schemes, and with furlough ending and depression rates rising, a perfect storm lies ahead for all collections teams as consumers juggle multiple payment demands.

Telecoms organisations face a highly challenging business environment as digitisation continues to fuel the relentless disruption of established business models and practices, to enable increasing competition from new, more agile, entrants and forces constant regulatory changes as the market grapples with the societal shift to living and conducting business online.

The second year of the pandemic has seen more people in the UK slide further into debt and organisations need to recalibrate their response through empathetic collections.

You don’t have to be involved in collections to be aware that the last 18 months have affected the financial circumstances of a huge number of people.

Treating customers with empathy has been an increasingly important area of focus within the customer experience industry.

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.

Angela Knowles-Ellis, Head of Telephony at a Capita run contact centre in Darlington, explains how training from bereavement charity Winston’s Wish has helped staff deal with vulnerable customers during the pandemic.