How to talk to a vulnerable customer (with a scored example)

Vulnerability is not a vibe. In a missed-payment call it often arrives as a throwaway line: the boiler is off, the kids are eating at school, a partner has left, a benefit has stopped. If you keep reading the payment options, you have failed the moment. Pause the collection path. Reflect the hardship in their words, not yours. “You said the payment would mean you cannot cover rent. I am going to stop the usual options and look at what we can do.” That sentence is the difference between a process and a person.

Firms write vulnerability policies because the default script assumes capacity. Your job is to know the override: hold, forbearance, breathing space, specialist team, charity signpost. You do not need to become a counsellor. You do need to stop taking a payment that would push someone off an essential. If you are unsure, say you will not take a payment today and you will get the right person. Guessing a discount to end the call is not support. It is another way of not listening.

“Have a look at our website” is not an offer. A hold on collections, a reduced arrangement that leaves money for essentials, a referral with a name and a time — those are offers. Check they understood. Ask whether anything you just proposed would make the essential worse. Write down what you agreed in language they can read back to a family member. Pride is in the room. Do not make them beg for the thing policy already allows.

The FCA’s guidance on customers in vulnerable circumstances is not a poster on the wall. It is the reason your firm has a hold, a specialist team, breathing space, or a charity signpost. Read that path before you are on a live call. If you only know the payment menu, you will keep reading it after they have told you rent is at risk. Vulnerability here is not a diagnosis. It is a circumstance — money for essentials, health, bereavement, capacity — where the usual process would cause harm. You do not need to become a counsellor. You need to know which button stops collections today.

Pride is in the room. They may not ask you to repeat yourself. After the call, send a short note: what they told you about essentials, what you paused, who will contact them, and by when. No cheerfulness. No “don’t worry.” If they asked you to send something they can look at after the children are in bed, send that, not a portal link buried under marketing. FG21/1 is explicit that communications should be understandable. If your recap needs a glossary, it is not a recap. And do not hide a payment request in the last line. If you paused collections, the note should still look paused.

A partner, a carer, or a child in the room changes what you can ask. Check who can hear you before you repeat account details. If they want that person to stay, slow down and use even plainer words. If they ask you to call back when they are alone, do that. Dignity includes not performing their hardship for an audience they did not choose.

Talking over the disclosure to finish the payment menu. Asking for “just something today” after they have said essentials are at risk. Pitying them. Challenging whether the hardship is real. Promising outcomes you cannot deliver. Putting them on hold without explaining why. Practise the mid-call turn: the customer was coping, then they were not. Your voice should get slower, not brighter. Cheerfulness after a hardship line sounds like you did not hear it.