Evaluating the effectiveness of the approach
Records of interactions can provide useful evidence of what types of indicators, methods of interacting and options for providing support work well for customers. They will help to inform an evaluation of the effectiveness of your overall approach to customer interaction. Good evaluation helps you to understand which aspects of your approach are the most effective at identifying the right customers, and the types of tools or support that work well to help customers manage their gambling in a way that works for them.
The following measures could help to work out whether your approach is working well:
- Customer retention.
- Reduction in complaints.
- The appropriate number of customer interactions in relation to the size of your customer base or footfall, and the type of gambling you offer, as follows.
You should know and understand the prevalence of at-risk gambling among your customer base. A starting point is the combined health surveys of England, Scotland and Wales (Gambling Commission 2018). This data is broken down to gambling activity type, and by region.
However, rates will vary significantly between geographical areas and localities, and research shows that problem gambling rates in urban areas are likely to be higher than the national average. Further information on this topic can be found in the Research Report Problem Gambling in Leeds (Kenyon et al 2016). When looking at the potential percentage of your customers who may be experiencing harm, remember to consider the percentage of gamblers participating in that activity and not the percentage of the adult population.
Currently the only industry-wide quantitative measure of identifying and interacting with customers who may be experiencing harms associated with gambling is data on the numbers of customers who received an interaction, submitted to the Commission as part of regulatory returns. We have clarified the definitions in regulatory returns to offer guidance on what should be included in a customer interaction (incident) log and make clearer what should be recorded.
Your log should include as a minimum:
- the identity or other identifier of the customer involved
- the behaviour or activity that prompted the interaction
- the advice or support given, and
- the outcome of the interaction.
Keeping your policies and procedures under review and up to date by taking into account research and industry best practice will help you to identify customers you should be interacting with, which will help you target your resources where they are most needed, in ways which may lead to better outcomes.
You should also review your internal controls following the publication of a regulatory settlement, to address any similar weaknesses which could exist in your own processes.
The role of staff
Your staff have an important role to play to understand whether your approach works.
As a minimum, you should:
- Ensure that records of all customer interactions are made by staff and used to aid decision making. Such records should be used for evaluation purposes, for example, dip sampling for quality assurance purposes. Or, to assess whether a customer changed their behaviour as the result of an interaction.
- Train staff to recognise when follow-up activity to an interaction is required.
- Ensure that staff use customer interaction records as a decision-making tool.
- Ensure that staff are properly supported in carrying out effective interventions.
Evaluate: questions to consider
- Do you know how many of your customers may be experiencing some level of harm associated with gambling?
- How do you know you are delivering positive outcomes for your customers?
- How could you improve on your policies and procedures?
- How could you share your good practice with the industry?
Understanding the impact of individual interactions
Last updated: 10 February 2023
Show updates to this content
Corrected formatting issues only.