Defining and Understanding Customer Compliance

Abstract

‘Compliance’ as a concept is not new in business practice. In the UK context, references to ‘customer compliance’ tend to be found in public sector analyses of benefit fraud squads in charge of ‘verifying’ the employment status of individuals who have signed up with JobCentres. More generally, practitioner and academic studies apply the term ‘compliance’ to describe the actions that relevant authorities take in order to deal with fraud allegations. For example, cases of alleged benefit fraud are investigated by ‘customer compliance’ officers who are also in charge of benefit reviews and may be asked to carry out interviews with suspects.‘Compliance’ as a concept is not new in business practice. In the UK context, references to ‘customer compliance’ tend to be found in public sector analyses of benefit fraud squads in charge of ‘verifying’ the employment status of individuals who have signed up with JobCentres. More generally, practitioner and academic studies apply the term ‘compliance’ to describe the actions that relevant authorities take in order to deal with fraud allegations. For example, cases of alleged benefit fraud are investigated by ‘customer compliance’ officers who are also in charge of benefit reviews and may be asked to carry out interviews with suspects.