The ‘Be in Control’ experience is one of the seven key Customer Experiences, Kindred focuses on. Embracing a customer outside-in approach to how the business operates, organises, designs and delivers change.
The scope of the ‘Be in Control’ experience is vast. It is first and foremost about keeping our customers’ gambling activity under control so that it always remains enjoyable. It’s about allowing our customers to verify themselves so that their experience stays uninhibited. It’s also about putting our customers in control of their personal data so that they can be confident of their privacy. It is about providing them with easy visibility of their activity so that they’re able to track and learn from their own data. Last but not the least, it is about enabling them to be in charge of what they want to see and receive so they only receive information that’s relevant to them.
This article will focus on some key activities we are undertaking across two areas: responsible gambling and player’s verification.
Making gambling enjoyable for everyone
As Henrik Tjärnström, Kindred´s CEO announced last year, one of Kindred’s most important ambitions is to receive zero revenue from harmful gambling by 2023. Kindred, as a company, values trust, integrity and player safety and welcomes regulations that strengthen such values. Kindred does not shy away from regulations but rather attempts to create a competitive advantage out of it. And this is clearly the case with responsible gambling.
We base our responsible gaming tools on academic research led by our in-house academic Maris Catania, Head of Responsible Gaming & Research, who started our award-winning Player Safety Early Detection System or PS-EDS for short. The system scans our customers' transactions and behaviours, before running them through a scoring system and plotting them on the gambling spectrum. In other words, it looks at how gamblers play, socially/for fun, or whether they are showing any signs of problem gambling.
PS-EDS looks at changes in customer behaviour such as chasing losses, bonus begging, rude impatient correspondence and so on. We collaborate with researchers to constantly add new indicators to detect problem gamblers. Once detected, our highly passionate and skilled Responsible Gaming team gets into action to help those customers.
Until now, our internal data shows that 81% of customers detected through PS-EDS show healthier gambling behaviour as a result and start using control tools voluntarily.
Further automating our actions
We are currently working on the roll-out of automated interventions to be sent to detected customers daily. These interventions will further minimise problematic play by prompting the customer to self-regulate, helping the Responsible Gaming team to get customer feedback and building a positive and sustainable relationship with the player.
Another goal is also to better present their activity summary to the customers so that high-risk customers can make more proactive decisions to regulate their gaming activity. The ambition is to put the data back into the customers' hands in an easily accessible way in order to prevent re-detection.
Applying Machine Learning approaches to the next generation of our Player Safety Early Detection System
We are currently building the next generation of Kindred’s Player Safety Early Detection System (PS-EDS), leveraging on our AI/Machine Learning capabilities.
PS-EDS 2.0 is a new model which will be used to score the problem gambling risk of our customers and will replace our existing PS-EDS model. PS-EDS 2.0 has its foundations in academic research and diagnosis criterion for gambling disorders. These concepts and frameworks were used to guide the building of the statistical models behind the model. PS-EDS 2.0 innovative approach uses behavioural data, not just financial transaction data, to focus on psychological signs of addiction and problematic behaviour. In addition, it uses a greatly expanded set of data and predictive factors, so it provides a basis to apply more advanced statistical and AI/Machine-Learning approaches.
But we can only help our customers if we have high levels of assurance that the account holder is who they claim to be. This is where Kindred’s Customer Due Diligence Strategy comes into play.
Customer Due Diligence Strategy
Our goal is to expand the usage of digital verification solutions to allow our customers to register and authenticate themselves without having to send documents. With removing manual verification processes, we intend to make this part of the experience fast and effortless. We currently offer several eID solutions that both meet customers’ expectations and regulatory requirements.
Kindred was the first online gaming operator to launch mydigipass in Belgium, BankID in Sweden and Idin in the Netherlands. BankID technology brings many possibilities, such as increasing account and funds security (password-less, two-factor authentication login) and allowing us to reduce fraud risk and credit card chargebacks.
eID solutions offer a more seamless journey from registration to the first deposit, since the customers using solutions like iDIN are verified within minutes. This fast and fully automated verification process also leads to a reduction of customer contacts to our help centres.
Results so far and the road ahead
With the ‘Be in Control’ experience having been set up last year, the new model has already delivered some promising results.
Happier customers
The satisfaction of Kindred customers of their account verification journey has improved by more than 10 points since Q3 2019.
Greater speed
Kindred is saving money by delivering new services faster; rolling out iDIN is one example. iDIN (Dutch BankID) is a verification method developed by Dutch banks that gives consumers the possibility to identify themselves within a few seconds. This eID solution reduces customer friction and internal operational workload. From the moment Kindred gained access to this third-party solution, the actual frontend development work only took two weeks, with an additional two weeks for testing before rollout. Normally, this type of development would have taken several months prior to the new experience delivery model.
Next steps
Our verification team continuously strives to find new and innovative providers in all our markets to expand our eID portfolio. Building further on our verification strategy, we are aiming for higher levels of verification, reduced customer frictions and operational workload, resulting in an effortless, easier and more enjoyable customer experience.
We, at Kindred, feel an enormous sense of pride and responsibility in working towards the noble and challenging ambition of improving the experience of our customers, but first and foremost, of protecting them from harmful gambling activities.
