From vulnerability training to vulnerability capability: why one-off learning does not stick

Can colleagues act differently when vulnerability is identified? 

Training is the most common investment firms make in vulnerability. It is also the one most likely to fade. Here is why, and what to do instead. 

If we asked every firm we have worked with to name the first thing they did when vulnerability became a priority, the most common answer would be training. It is the natural starting point. Colleagues need to understand what vulnerability is, how to recognise it, and why it matters. 

We are not against training. Good training raises awareness, builds empathy, and gives colleagues a shared language. But training alone does not create lasting change. And in many firms, it has become the default investment: the thing you do when you want to demonstrate action, even when the problem sits somewhere else entirely. 

Why training fades

We regularly speak to colleagues who have completed vulnerability training and found it valuable. They describe the case studies, the discussions, the moments of realisation. And then they go back to their desks and deliver the same process they delivered before. 

This is not a failure of the training. It is a failure of the environment the training sits within. If the processes, tools and support options have not changed, awareness has nowhere to go. A colleague who can recognise vulnerability but has no supported route to respond to it is in a worse position than before. They now see the problem clearly but cannot act on it. 

Within six months, the impact of standalone training has typically faded. Not because colleagues have forgotten what they learned, but because the organisation has not given them anything to do with it. The awareness remains, but the motivation to act on it has been eroded by the reality that the system has not changed. 

The difference between training and capability

Training is an event. Capability is a state. Training tells colleagues what vulnerability is. Capability means they know what to do when they encounter it, and the organisation supports them to do it. 

Capability requires three things working together. First, colleagues need to understand vulnerability and its impact on the customer. Training does this. Second, they need processes and tools that respond when a vulnerability is identified. This is Inclusive Design. Third, they need to see that their actions lead to different outcomes. This is feedback and evidence. 

When all three are in place, colleagues do not just recognise vulnerability. They respond to it confidently, consistently, and in ways that lead to tangible change for the customer. This is what improving vulnerable customer outcomes looks like at the colleague level.

What capability looks like in practice

In the firms where colleague capability is strongest, it has not come from a training programme. It has come from involvement. Colleagues who participated in co-discovery and co-design workshops, who heard directly from vulnerable customers, who helped shape the solutions carry that learning far longer than any training course could. 

This is one of the most powerful effects of Inclusive Design. The methodology does not just produce better services. It produces more capable colleagues. People who have been part of the process understand why things have changed, not just what has changed. They become advocates, not just implementers. 

It also extends beyond frontline teams. Operational embedding includes building capability in non-customer-facing roles: process designers, MI analysts, team leaders, and decision-makers who shape the environment colleagues work in. If vulnerability capability only exists at the front line, it will always depend on individual effort rather than systemic support. 

Learning by doing

The most effective approach we have seen combines structured learning with practical involvement. Colleagues learn about vulnerability by improving their own services. They hear from vulnerable customers. They see the data. They contribute to the design. And they experience the difference when the new process goes live. 

This is learning by doing. It sticks because it is real. It builds confidence because colleagues have seen the evidence. And it sustains itself because the capability is embedded in how the team works, not in a course that someone attended once. 

If your current approach to vulnerability relies on periodic training, the question is not whether the training was good. The question is whether it changed anything. If your colleagues are more aware but not more equipped, the gap is not in their learning. It is in your operation. 

Let’s talk

If you want to build colleague capability that lasts, we can help. Our Inclusive Design methodology builds understanding and confidence through involvement, not just instruction. A Vulnerability Review is a good starting point for understanding where your colleagues have the awareness but not the tools to act on it. 

hello@delehantyconsulting.co.uk

The post From vulnerability training to vulnerability capability: why one-off learning does not stick    appeared first on Delehanty Consulting.

Inclusive design is not what you think it is

Are your services designed with vulnerable customers or assumptions? 

Many firms hear ‘inclusive design’ and think accessibility. Or they think it is a user experience (UX) exercise. It is neither. Inclusive design is a methodology for making services work for vulnerable customers, and for all customers who use them. 

There is a version of inclusive design that has become familiar in digital and product teams. It usually centres on accessibility: making sure a website works with screen readers, a form is navigable by keyboard, a document meets WCAG standards. This matters. But it is not what we mean when we talk about inclusive design for vulnerable customers. 

The Inclusive Design Delehanty Consulting practices starts with the customer, not the interface. It asks what happens when a person in a vulnerable situation tries to use your service. Not your website. Your service. The end-to-end customer journey, from first contact through to resolution, including every handoff, decision point, and moment of friction along the way

Why this matters more than accessibility alone

A vulnerable customer may be able to navigate your website perfectly well and still have a terrible experience of your service. They may call your contact centre and be asked to repeat painful information three times because your systems do not carry it throughout the journey or into other products. They may be sent a letter they cannot act on because it assumes a level of financial literacy they do not have. They may trigger a collections process that does not recognise their circumstances until it is too late. 

These are not accessibility failures. They are service design failures. They happen when customer journeys are designed for the average customer and never tested against the reality of vulnerability. . 

How it works

Inclusive Design has four stages: Discover, Design, Test, and Launch. Each stage delivers standalone value. Together, they create change that is designed to become your way of working. 

In the Discover stage, we carry out vulnerable customer journey mapping alongside the people who live and deliver the experience. This means co-discovery with vulnerable customers and the colleagues who serve them. We use lived experience discovery, colleague workshops, and a range of solicited and unsolicited insight sources to build a clear view of the journey from the vulnerable customer’s perspective: where the gaps are and what needs to change. 

In the Design stage, we ideate solutions with the same people. Not in a workshop room removed from reality, but grounded in the evidence from the Discover stage. The output is a ranked set of changes designed to close needs gaps in vulnerable customer journeys. 

In the Test stage, with the same people, we start with basic prototypes and evolve them together until the customer, colleagues, and commercial impact are sufficiently proven to commit to a full build. This replaces assumptions with evidence and mitigates risk. It also builds confidence across the organisation that the changes will work. 

In the Launch stage, the full build is delivered and embedded into the operation. This includes closing the loop with customers and colleagues through “you said, we did” stories that demonstrate the change was real and lasting. 

Designing services for vulnerable customers benefits everyone

One of the most consistent findings across our work is that vulnerability-led service design improves the experience for all customers, not only those in vulnerable circumstances. When you remove unnecessary friction, simplify communications, and build flexibility into processes, every customer benefits. 

This is the commercial case for Inclusive Design. It is not a cost centre. It is a method for improving customer outcomes across the board, reducing complaint volumes, lowering operational cost, and building the kind of service that customers, colleagues, and commercial teams all recognise as better. 

The difference between doing and embedding

We often meet firms that have run customer research, held design workshops, or piloted improvements in one part of the business. These are positive steps. But if the output sits in a presentation rather than in the live operation, it has not been embedded. 

Inclusive Design is not a project. It is a way of working. The firms that get the most from it are the ones that build the methodology into how they review, design, and improve their services on an ongoing basis. When that happens, improving vulnerable customer outcomes stops being a separate initiative and starts being part of how the business operates. 

The four stages are designed to be repeatable. As your business changes, as regulation evolves, as the needs of your vulnerable customers shift, the same methodology applies. Discover, Design, Test, Launch. Each time, grounded in the three sources of truth: vulnerable customers, colleagues, and data.

Let’s talk

If you want to explore what Inclusive Design could look like in your organisation, a Vulnerability Review is a good starting point. It helps you understand where you are now and where the biggest opportunities for change sit in your vulnerable customer journeys. 

hello@delehantyconsulting.co.uk

The post Inclusive design is not what you think it is appeared first on Delehanty Consulting.

What your complaints data is not telling you about vulnerable customers

What happens when the most affected customers stay silent? 

Complaints are the insight source most firms rely on first. But if complaints data is the only lens you are using to understand vulnerable customers, you are seeing a fraction of the picture. 

Most organisations track complaints. Many report on them regularly. Some even break them down by customer segment, including vulnerability. On the surface, this looks like a firm that is listening to its vulnerable customers. 

But complaints data has a fundamental limitation. It only captures the experience of customers who complained. And for vulnerable customers, the decision to complain is itself shaped by the very circumstances that make them vulnerable. 

The customers who do not complain

A customer dealing with a bereavement may not have the energy to raise a formal complaint about a process that added unnecessary friction to an already difficult moment. A customer with a cognitive impairment may not recognise that the service they received was below the standard they should expect. A customer in financial difficulty may be too anxious about the outcome of their case to risk drawing attention to how it was handled. 

These are not edge cases. They are the everyday reality for a significant proportion of your customer base. If your vulnerability risk management relies primarily on complaints, you are measuring the visible surface of a much deeper issue. 

Regulators expect firms to actively monitor customer outcomes, rather than waiting for customers to report poor ones. For vulnerable customers, this distinction matters. The absence of complaints is not evidence of good outcomes. It may be evidence that the customers most affected are the least likely to tell you. 

Solicited and unsolicited insights

Complaints are one source of insight. But understanding what is really happening in vulnerable customer journeys requires a broader view. We think of customer insight as falling into two categories: solicited and unsolicited. 

Unsolicited insights are the signals that arrive without being asked for. Complaints sit here, but so do social media mentions, call reasons, repeat contact patterns, journey abandonment data, and the observations colleagues share informally every day. Most firms collect this data. Few connect it to vulnerability in a structured way. 

Solicited insights are the ones you go looking for. Lived experience discovery with vulnerable customers. Colleague interviews and workshops. Vulnerable customer journey mapping designed to surface what the standard MI does not capture. These are the insights that reveal why things are happening, not just what is happening. 

When you combine both, you get a vulnerability gap analysis that complaints data alone could never provide. You see where the customer journey works, where it fails, and crucially, where the failure is invisible to your existing reporting. 

What the data is trying to tell you

In our experience, the most revealing data points are rarely in the complaints MI. They are in the patterns that sit just beneath it. Repeat contacts where a vulnerable customer calls back three times because the first interaction did not resolve their need. Journey abandonment where a customer starts a process, hits a barrier, and quietly drops out. Escalations where a colleague knows the standard process will not work for this customer but has no supported alternative. 

These patterns are signals that conduct risk is building. They tell you that the journey was not designed for the customer in front of it. They point to exactly where foreseeable harm sits, often long before that harm shows up as a complaint. 

From data to action

The firms that use insight well do not just collect more data. They connect it differently. They build a picture of the vulnerable customer experience from multiple angles: what customers say, what colleagues see, and what the data reveals. They use that picture to improve outcomes for vulnerable customers, not just to report on them. 

This matters for colleagues as much as customers. When frontline teams can see that the data they record and the feedback they share is leading to tangible change in how vulnerable customers are served, they engage differently. The insight becomes a tool for improvement, not just a reporting requirement. 

A customer vulnerability audit that draws on the full range of solicited and unsolicited insights gives you something complaints alone never will: a view of the experience your vulnerable customers are actually having, including the ones who never told you it was not good enough. 

Let’s talk

If you know your complaints data is not giving you the full picture, Inclusive Design can help you understand what your existing sources of insight are missing and how to build a more complete view of your vulnerable customers’ experience. 

hello@delehantyconsulting.co.uk

The post What your complaints data is not telling you about vulnerable customers  appeared first on Delehanty Consulting.