SGW: The value of quality assurance to enhance safer gambling practices

Quality assurance (QA) is a vital internal evaluation process in most businesses today. Still, when it comes to gambling operators, QA is an even more vital evaluation tool than it is for most.

Gambling is evolving at lightspeed. Regulation and operator responsibilities hang onto its coattails as operators look to future-proof their business through sustainability and other proactive steps … which brings us nicely back to QA.

When I joined EPIC, almost two years ago, I did so with the mindset of helping to keep more people in a safer place through my lived experience of gambling-related harm. Little did I know the opportunity would come so quickly as I was introduced to a role that meant I’d be externally evaluating operator calls, but how did I feel about liaising with operators? 

I had suffered serious gambling-related harm that had left me at various times without money, without food and without a home. However, I had no war with the industry. My personal experience and recovery journey didn’t seek judgement, as I was ultimately and wholly accountable to myself. However, I wasn’t naïve. 

I knew more had to be done to protect people like me. People couldn’t be allowed to gamble into addiction without any checks or balances, and as time marched on, it was clear that operators would have to start looking after people like me to protect their licence. My eventual arrival at EPIC would allow me to address my concerns through my role.

Part of my QA role at EPIC is to select randomised calls on a monthly basis from a tier-one operator, listen to them and then evaluate them. Simple enough, you may think, but it takes diligence, effort, patience, non-judgement and, crucially, lived experience.

Every call I listen to always comes back to the same overriding evaluation at the end of the call: ‘Is this customer being kept in a safe space as a result of the operator’s interactions?’. The external evaluation comprises of three components: an effective call, an advisory call and a critical failure call. I’ve experienced all of these at some point in the process.

Every operator will have their own internal QA metrics, measuring everything from opening a call to promoting safer gambling tools, which is how it should be. The real value of having the calls externally evaluated by those with lived experience is that they can offer that unique point of view from an addict’s perspective; there are insights that I can offer from my lived experience that can be shared and used to improve customer interactions across a whole safer gambling department.

If you had told me 10 years ago – when I was at my rock bottom, just before I limped into recovery –  that I’d be doing this work, I would have thought it was down to the delirious state I was in at the time, but here’s the thing: 10 years ago there was no such thing as a ‘wellbeing chat’ from ‘safer gambling departments’. Nobody questioned my affordability. I was kept in a permanent, unsafe place and allowed to gamble without a care in the world, even to the point of reaching self-destruction.

It’s a brave move to have your calls externally evaluated by someone with lived experience. You have to be able to take the feedback that comes with it. I’m glad to say that every piece of feedback and insight has been taken positively to improve the analyst’s interactions and also the customer’s experience.

I take QA seriously; how can I not? Every penny I gambled went through an operator, so it resonates when I hear a call where I can essentially hear someone like me. It gives me confidence when the operator uses an effective interaction or an EPIC-trained technique to identify harm and have the type of conversation I missed out on.

Then, there are calls that go above and beyond from analysts. I’ve heard calls where customers have admitted they have a problem, and it’s all down to the effectiveness of the interaction. The analyst may have used one of our EPIC-trained techniques they’ve learned through our Interactions Masterclass, such as exactly how to speak to that customer and the customer has opened up. When this happens, the analyst will be rightly praised.

We know much more can be done to educate customers and to raise prevention levels among people who are out there gambling, whether that be through a mobile device or in a retail space. As I speak, I am currently the only person in the world externally evaluating major operator calls that I know of, and I share this for a simple reason. 10 years ago, as I was in a recovery room breaking down, EPIC was in the early stages of starting up. Ever since then, they have cared relentlessly about preventing gambling-related harm.

There’s a big difference 10 years down the track because, thankfully, we aren’t the only ones who care. Within the safer gambling departments of operators that we’ve spent time with, there are analysts who also care and are passionate about preventing gambling-related harm. You may never hear or read about them, but trust me, they are there.

Alan Smart joined EPIC in 2021 after more than 15 years in sales working with a number of premium brands across the UK.
 
In his role as harm prevention manager, engaging with major gambling operators on both a consultative and training basis, Alan’s impactful lived experience of gambling-related harm delivers a captivating insight into juggling a gambling addiction between the home and the workplace, and the eventual recovery that took place in 2013 when he placed his last bet.