Why inclusive outcomes
Inclusive Outcomes is our new specialist practice for all things customer vulnerability at The Big Window. Senior Partner Lauren Peel talks about the importance of inclusion for customers, and the work we’re doing with organisations.
What does inclusive outcomes mean?
We all want our customers to have good – or even great – outcomes from their interactions with us, and from the products they hold with us.
One of the core principles of this is through inclusive design. There’s a phrase I love in inclusive design – “design for the edges”.
It makes me think about the contrast between designing for the edges, and how some organisations might define a target market.
Target market sounds neat, clear cut, easy to define. You can almost feel that it has a distinct, defined boundary. On paper, and in the minds of many people within your organisation, your target market might have predictable, stable lives, with rational decision making.
We know that’s not the case. People have complex, unpredictable, messy lives. We’ve all been guilty of making decisions that aren’t purely rational.
Do your design processes consider that someone might be in your neat target market category to start with, and then lose their job, or get ill, or experience a bereavement? What does that mean for the outcomes they experience?
And also for people who are clearly in your target market, but who are also visually impaired, or don’t speak English well, or have low numeracy skills. What about their outcomes?
Inclusive design helps to deliver inclusive outcomes – and that’s what we want to deliver for all of our customers, isn’t it?
From D&I to V&I
It’s interesting that when we talk about colleagues and employees with additional support needs, or who might experience barriers to success at work, we talk about diversity and inclusion rather than “vulnerable employees”.
The language we use internally doesn’t reflect the language we use for our customers – who are equally (if not more) diverse. Some organisations are starting to move to “customer inclusion” language, and this may or may not change their culture too.
Whichever language we prefer to use, we all talk about lots of similar things in vulnerability. The characteristics of vulnerability. The indicators that we can see and hear, and those we can’t. The impacts of those characteristics on people.
All of our customers are people with lives, needs, and individual circumstances. At some point, all of them will experience something that could leave them vulnerable to harm – even more so in certain product areas (Anything with a claim, for example, or designed to support people who are overindebted or behind on payments).
So the onus is on us – to design our processes, products and services to ensure people are included. To ensure their outcomes are as good as for people who aren’t currently vulnerable to harm.
That’s what we’re here to do
Inclusive outcomes is about helping organsiations design, deliver and monitor good outcomes for all customers. We work with financial services, utilities, telecoms, and more.
Wherever you are on your journey, however big or small your teams, we’re here to work with people who want to improve outcomes for vulnerable customers.
