Cowry’s team of Behavioural Scientists intervened with suggested phrases for call centre agents to use during conversations over the phone. These phrases empowered agents to have more compassionate conversations with their vulnerable customers. This made the life of the agent a lot easier. The phrases themselves leveraged principles from behavioural science that would help customers understand the value of a record, and therefore give consent.
Examples of the nudges used in the script are:
Reciprocity : Using words such as “Thank you for sharing this with me” or “We want to support you” in the right contexts in the conversation helps build reciprocity between the call centre agents and the customer.
Social Norms: Phrases such as “I help many people like you going through a similar situation” helps normalise the idea of vulnerability. This reassures the customer it’s nothing to feel ashamed of.
Consistency Principle: Asking for consent by also providing a reason such as “so that we can continue to provide you with the best possible service” helps frame the sentence in a manner so that disagreeing with it would be inconsistent with the customers internal beliefs. I.e They would be telling themselves that they don’t want the best possible service.
It (the phrases) helped me feel a lot more comfortable talking to and identifying vulnerable customers.
Customer Service Agent