Vulnerability on the Line – What happens when risk, responsibility and human emotions collide?
UKCCF 6-Part Webinar Series chaired by Elaine Lee, Managing Director, Reynolds Busby Lee
The old playbook for customer vulnerability is officially obsolete.
For years, businesses have treated vulnerability as an “edge case”—a flag to be raised or a specific script to be read. But in today’s reality, vulnerability isn’t an exception; it’s structural. When cost-of-living crises, mental health challenges, and housing insecurity collide with corporate KPIs, the result is often a messy, high-stakes friction that traditional systems simply aren’t built to handle.
UKCCF would like to invite you to join us for our new webinar series: to Vulnerability on the Line – What happens when risk, responsibility and human emotions collide? , a 6-part webinar series chaired by Elaine Lee, Managing Director of Reynolds Busby Lee. For each session, Elaine will be joined by a different industry guest to share their unique perspective and engage in an in-depth discussion on the challenges at hand.
Over six sessions, we are moving past the “tick-box” exercise of compliance to explore what happens when risk, responsibility, and raw human emotions collide on the front line.
The Series Roadmap:
When: 18th February 2026 – 12:30pm (45 min session)
Guest speaker: Sophie Cotton, Chief Customer Officer, Newstel Worldwide
What we wil cover:
- The Volume Reality: Why debt, health, and housing insecurity are now core business drivers, not outliers.
- Moving Beyond the “Flag”: The hidden dangers of treating human struggle as a mere checkbox or script.
- The Leadership Blindspot: What decision-makers consistently underestimate regarding the frequency and intensity of customer needs.
- Systemic Redesign: How to stop building for the “average” and start building for the actual.
When: 15th April 2026 – 12:30pm (30 min session)
Guest Speaker: TBC
What we wil cover:
The Absorption of Risk: Why frontline staff end up carrying the emotional load that organisations fail to categorise.
Beyond Burnout: Understanding the mechanics of emotional contagion, empathy fatigue, and cumulative trauma.
The Resilience Myth: Why “wellbeing apps” and “resilience training” are failing to fix systemic damage.
The Hidden Cost of Care: How the drive to “support the customer” can quietly erode the mental health of the agent.
When: 10th June 2026 – 12:30pm (30 min session)
Guest Speaker: TBC
What we will cover:
The Empathy Backfire: Why emotional alignment without boundaries leads to “rescuing” behaviors and escalation loops.
Containment vs. Connection: Learning the vital distinction between feeling with a customer and holding space for them.
The High-Performer Secret: Analysing what skilled agents do differently to stay calm and effective under extreme pressure.
Closing the Drain: How to prevent agents from over-identifying with trauma and carrying the “emotional debt” of their shift home.
Date: TBC – July 2026 – 12:30pm (30 min session)
Guest Speaker: TBC
What we will cover:
The Hidden Decision-Tree: A look at the split-second choices agents make that never show up in your CRM data.
Compliance vs. Compassion: Why forcing agents to choose between “the rules” and “the right thing” creates a culture of invisible risk.
The System Failure Trap: Why inconsistent outcomes are rarely a “performance issue” and almost always a design flaw.
The Psychology of Fear: How uncertainty about “getting it wrong” fundamentally changes how agents handle vulnerable callers.
Date: 23rd September 2026 – 12:30pm (30 min session)
Guest Speaker: Vicki Mercer, Head of Customer Service, Charities Aid Foundation
What we will cover:
The Cost of Silence: Why staff hesitation is the single greatest unseen risk to your most vulnerable service users.
The Debriefing Gap: How poor (or non-existent) post-call debriefs ensure that harm is repeated rather than used as a tool for learning.
Psychological Safety at the Frontline: What stops an agent from saying “this process is failing this customer,” and how that silence compounds over time.
Emotional Signals as Data: How to transform the “gut feelings” of your staff into a proactive risk-management strategy.
Date: 11th November 2026 – 12:30pm (45 min session)
Guest Speaker: TBC
What we will cover:
Vulnerability by Design: How to embed vulnerability considerations directly into your policy, workflow, and leadership DNA.
The Standardisation Balance: Identifying exactly what should be automated/standardised and what must remain protected as a human interaction.
Empowerment vs. Infantilisation: How to provide robust support for agents without stripping away their professional agency and autonomy.
Leadership Competence: Why vulnerability management is a core commercial and operational skill, not just a “wellbeing add-on.”
Meet our series chair:
Elaine Lee
Managing Director, Reynolds Busby Lee
Elaine Lee is Managing Director at Reynolds Busby Lee, where she advises organisations on customer experience and responsible marketing. She brings strategic insight and a practical, people-first approach to help brands improve communications, loyalty, and support for vulnerable customers. She also works with contact centre teams to effectively deliver those communications in personalised and engaging ways that ensure brand engagement and loyalty.
Meet our Guest Speakers:
Guest Speaker: Part 1
Sophie Cotton
Chief Customer Officer, Newstel Worldwide
Sophie is an accomplished, time-served leader in e-commerce, with deep expertise across contact centres and customer experience. She brings a pragmatic, commercially grounded approach to delivering insight-led service in fast-moving, omni-channel environments.
Throughout her career, Sophie has aligned contact centre operations and CX strategy to support rapid corporate growth, always underpinned by a strong understanding of the three critical pillars: people, process and systems. She has extensive experience in scaling teams, leading change programmes, embedding fit-for-purpose processes and selecting and implementing key SaaS technologies to drive meaningful Voice of the Customer insight.
A passionate advocate for customer-first cultures, Sophie is known for challenging organisations to act on CX insight — particularly where it can improve outcomes for customers who may be vulnerable or at risk of detriment.
Sophie is a recognised industry speaker. She is also a Silver Winner of the UKCCF Awards in Director of the Year.