January 2009 saw the FSA assess its members' ability to deliver the six Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) outcomes. Treating customers fairly is central to the delivery of the FSA's retail regulatory agenda as well as being a key part of its move to more principles-based regulation.

Pauline Willcock, Business Architect, Friends Provident, explains: "In July 2008 we started to research suppliers of the software that we needed to build the surveys and do the reporting for TCF. Confirmit was selected for its track record and ability to provide Friends Provident with a high level of support and move quickly to meet our deadlines. The Confirmit team was well aligned with Friends Provident's thinking and objectives.

"By December we went live with our first TCF surveys - and they were across all of our different channels: online, IVR, phone and paper. Our team is now achieving a good rate of response - on one process alone over 1100 items of customer feedback have been generated in less than 3 months. Initially the focus was entirely on achieving the TCF outcomes but, as our TCF initiatives are so successful, we can now expand the user base so that the senior customer service managers can see all the results, including the verbatim comments from customers, and can start to take action as necessary."

Brian Dingsdale, Senior Programme Director at Friends Provident added: "The scalability of the Confirmit platform in terms of size and language was very important to Friends Provident, particularly our international businesses.

"Confirmit has now expanded beyond TCF and has become a valuable business tool for Friends Provident enabling our market research team to build future surveys using the platform," said Brian Dingsdale.

Customer feedback generated from the Confirmit surveys helps Friends Provident to successfully measure three of the TCF outcomes:

Outcome 3 - Consumers are provided with clear information and are kept appropriately informed before, during, during and after the point of sale.
Outcome 5 - Consumers are provided with products that perform as firms have led them to expect, and the associated service is of an acceptable standard and as they have been led to expect.
Outcome 6 - Consumers do not face unreasonable post-sale barriers imposed by firms to change product, switch provider, submit a claim or make a complaint.

Gary Schwartz, SVP Marketing, Confirmit, commented: "We are delighted to have worked so closely with Friends Provident in support of its TCF initiative. The ability within the software to handle multichannel customer feedback is a vital part of ensuring that Friends Provident achieves excellent survey response rates. It is good to see that Confirmit has expanded beyond TCF and has become a valuable business tool for Friends Provident."