Disabled Customers: Driving Quality Through Awareness
An Employers' Forum on Disability Briefing for CSR Practitioners
In association with AccountAbility with the support of Cable & Wireless
Disabled people form a significant market - worth an estimated £50 billion in the UK - yet, they are more likely to be excluded by inaccessible premises, products and services. There is a clear business case for every company to address the needs and expectations of both current and potential disabled customers.
Working with disabled customers can have a positive impact on a number of areas of the business:
- Access to a profitable market
- Improved customer service for all customers
- Improved reputation with:
- Disabled customers, their friends and families (with an estimated combined spending power of £50bn (1))
- The growing number of customers interested in CSR. (One fifth of all consumers now reject or boycott a product on the grounds of social responsibility(2)
- Potential employees - disabled and non-disabled - who are attracted to work with a socially responsible companies
- Improved services for a socially excluded group - an important aim of many socially responsible businesses
Socially Responsible Investment (SRI)
The importance of serving disabled customers is an emerging item on the corporate social responsibility agenda, for example in Socially Responsible Investment.
Sustainable Asset Management (SAM), which works with Dow Jones on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, measures the extent to which companies in the index consider the needs of disabled customers in two sectors - Broadcasting and Communications.
In Broadcasting, SAM test if companies are providing programmes targeting a disabled audience (as a percentage of total broadcasting) and in the fixed line and mobile communication and communication technology sector, they test whether companies offer special programmes for improving access to telecommunications for people with disabilities (as a percentage of revenues).
The business case for serving disabled customers reflects the complexity business manages every day in the fast-moving business environment. There is a tendency to assume that that label "disabled" applies to the excluded. This gets in the way when a company seeks to respond to the needs of an affluent, aging and - increasingly - impaired population. Many disabled people are socially and economically excluded and stand to benefit greatly from business initiatives which reaching out to excluded customers. Many others are over 45, wealthy, proportionally more likely to spend their savings and together form a profitable market which any company should find attractive.
- Institute of Employment Studies, Nigal Meager, Commissioned by the Employers Forum on Disability, 1999.
- MORI, 2001.