How Priority Assist Can Help Your Vulnerable Customers

Priority assistance is a service that some telecommunications businesses provide. It ensures vulnerable people have access to a working landline phone. 

In Australia, Telstra is required to provide priority assistance to people with life-threatening illnesses. Other telcos may provide priority assistance if they choose. 

Priority assistance isn’t limited to telco companies. Businesses like Woolworths and Coles have started offering priority assistance to seniors, people with disabilities, and vulnerable people for grocery delivery. 

If you’re running a business and looking for a way to protect your vulnerable customers, you can offer priority assistance. 

To do so, you must meet minimum standards in an industry code, Priority Assistance for Life Threatening Medical Conditions.

This includes rules for:

• faster fault repairs
• shorter time to connect new services
• more reliable service

This means if you receive complaints from your priority assist customers, you must act quickly to prioritise the complaint and get it resolved. 

If you’re going to offer priority assistance for your customers, then you’re going to need a complaints management process that can handle it. 

Here’s some tips on how to prioritise your complaints:

• Segment your customers
• Identify which customers will benefit the most from your support
• Rank complaints according to urgency and severity
• Use automated software to identify high-risk complaints 
• Ensure all your employees are in the loop

Prioritising complaints from your most vulnerable customers is a great way to build positive relationships with your customers. It also helps to establish social proof, credibility and a reputation for your business. 

Need a better way to resolve complaints?

If you’re looking for an easier way to track, manage and resolve complaints, then take a look at our software. 

At Causia®, our Complaints Pro® software gives you complete visibility and control of your complaints, incidents and risks in a single integrated solution. 

Book a demo or talk to our expert team today to streamline your approach to internal disputes.