We caught up with Mark McCaffrey, Head of Compliance Policy, Retail & Sportsbook, to hear how we're supporting Safer Gambling in Retail.
Safer Gambling week provides an opportunity to reflect on the great progress we have made, and continue to make in retail, to provide an experience that promotes positive play.
Thanks to our wonderful shop based colleagues and the great relationships that they have with their customers, we have an advantage when it comes to safer gambling in retail. Our colleagues have genuine care for our customers and are great at spotting those small changes in behaviour and that enables them to interact early.
We have worked hard this year to build on the great work of our colleagues by supporting them with more tools and delivering a number of changes which have moved our control framework forward:
- New exception reporting has been introduced to better support colleagues identifying customers who may benefit from an interaction due to changes in their spend, visits or time spent gambling.
- A new affordability approach has been introduced to prompt conversations at the right point in the customer journey, so we capture the customers voice on what is affordable for them and help them keep their play at affordable and sustainable levels.
- Improvements in the current system colleagues use to record customer interactions and decision making to make it easier and quicker to record the details and review customers holistically.
This is great progress, and we are really pleased, but there is more to do. We are focused on continuing to improve and have some really exciting initiatives planned for the rest of this year and 2024.
We will be continuing our investment in technology in 2024. We are actively exploring options to change our customer management system and expect to have some exciting news to share on that in the coming months. Other technology driven solutions in the pipeline include better support for colleagues to identify customers through implementation of a data driven markers of harm model, as well as introducing bespoke shop level prompts based on the each shops risk profile. Our investment in technology in this space is all aimed at making it easier for our colleagues to do the great job they do in recognising potential markers of harm and acting on them.
We have also partnered with BetKnowMore to develop a training programme for our Cluster Operations Managers (COMSs) and shop teams, focusing on how to have effective interactions. Our COMs will be receiving face to face training, including the opportunity to hear from people with lived experience of gambling harm. COMs will then be equipped with the learning and tools to roll the training out across our shop teams. Interacting with customers in a face-to-face environment can be really challenging, and our shop teams do a brilliant job. This training will be designed to enhance those skills even further.
There is lots more to come and we look forward to sharing that with you in due course. Retail will of course be celebrating Safer Gambling Week and amongst other things you can expect to see webinars, top tips, best practice and quizzes.
Player safety is important to us every day of every week in every shop. Safer Gambling Week provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the great things we do, share the exciting plans we have and provide opportunity for everyone to learn a little more about this important subject.
