When a leading high-street bank noticed more calls from vulnerable customers expressing suicidal thoughts, they turned to Samaritans for help.
The challenge:
From consumer banking and payments operations around the world to top-tier, full service, global corporate and investment banking, the bank handles a diverse range of customers and clients. Through conversations with their customers, they noticed a concerning increase in the number of calls where vulnerable customers were expressing a desire to end their lives.
Without training, it can be quite challenging to know how to handle these situations and what to say to someone who is having suicidal thoughts.
The solution:
Wanting to ensure that they were able to support their customers in a timely and sensitive way when they express suicidal feelings, the bank invested in a customised training programme with Samaritans which built on our managing suicidal conversations training and also included colleague wellbeing and decompression.
The course provided valuable skills and guidance on how to respond to calls with empathy and care when interacting with customers who experience suicidal thoughts or intentions. It emphasised the importance of listening without judgement, avoiding dismissive language and knowing the appropriate resource and protocols to help connect their customers with professional, external support.
The impact:
The customer service team provide support by phone for some of their most vulnerable customers, dealing with sensitive and difficult situations daily. After STEP training, staff were more confident in their abilities to actively listen, identify, and appropriately respond to customers expressing suicidal thoughts.
The new training also gave staff the skills and confidence to better support colleagues who work in emotionally demanding environments and ensure they can effectively decompress following these emotional calls.
There have even been a few situations where this training has directly enabled staff to intervene and ensure customers expressing suicidal thoughts have got the help they needed, by taking a calm, compassionate approach. Colleagues who have taken the training have expressed their gratitude for the invaluable skills they learned to navigate difficult conversations with care and calmness to make a real difference.
The training has been invaluable to me when I find myself talking to our most vulnerable customers. The skills and tools I learnt has given me much more confidence with these types of calls. It’s all about taking the time, really listening and breaking down the conversation, knowing when to give customers time or enable them to open up.
Your people and teams can benefit from Samaritans’ training too.
Get in touch with our team today