Many businesses think about BSL interpreting as something you only need for specific occasions; a formal meeting, perhaps, or an appointment flagged in advance as needing extra support.
Yet that thinking is why so many Deaf customers still hit a wall somewhere in their journey with you, even if the initial contact went smoothly.
A customer journey isn’t one interaction. It’s dozens of small ones, stretched across weeks or months, and each one carries its own risk of shutting a Deaf customer out if there’s no accessible way through it. This blog looks at where those gaps tend to appear across the customer journey and what you can do to close them.
What counts as a customer touchpoint?
Think about how many times a customer interacts with your business beyond the obvious ones. There’s the initial enquiry, then the follow-up call to confirm details. There’s the moment they get passed between departments because the first person they spoke to couldn’t help. There’s the complaint, the account update, the renewal and the aftercare check-in. Each of these is a touchpoint, and each one can succeed or fail independently of the others.
A Deaf customer might book an appointment perfectly well through your website, only to find that confirming a change to that booking requires a phone call. The online part of the journey worked. The next step didn’t. From the customer’s perspective, that could either be a minor inconvenience or cause them to either give up or find a workaround that shouldn’t have been necessary in the first place.
Why patchy BSL provision doesn’t work
Offering BSL interpreting support at one stage of the customer journey and not the others creates a strange kind of accessibility that isn’t really accessible at all. A Deaf customer who can book a service through video relay but then can’t chase up a query afterwards is left with the same options as before. They’ll still have to either bring a hearing friend along, rely on lipreading and hope for the best, or give up and go elsewhere.
The Equality Act 2010 requires you to make reasonable adjustments across your service, not at a single point of contact you happen to have addressed. A business that’s accessible for the sales call but silent on how a Deaf customer raises a complaint hasn’t met that obligation. It’s ticked one box but left the rest untouched.
It matters for trust, too. Your customers will notice when accessibility feels like an afterthought bolted onto one part of the process rather than something considered throughout. A Deaf customer who has a smooth first interaction and then hits a wall at the second or third touchpoint isn’t likely to give you a fourth chance. They’ll find a competitor whose service works for them consistently, not just occasionally.
Where BSL interpreting adds the most value
Some touchpoints matter more than others, and it’s worth being deliberate about where you prioritise support.
The enquiry stage is where you’ll either win or lose a Deaf customer before they’ve become a customer at all. If someone can’t easily ask a question about your service, they won’t wait around to find out if things improve later.
Service delivery and in-person appointments are also critical, particularly in healthcare, legal or financial contexts where a misunderstanding can have consequences beyond mild frustration. This is where a qualified BSL interpreter can make the difference between a customer guessing or really understanding what’s happening to them.
Complaints are often the most emotionally charged interactions a customer has with any business. They’re also, frustratingly, the ones most likely to default back to ‘please call this number’, the barrier a Deaf customer has been trying to avoid.
Aftercare and account management also often get overlooked because they feel routine. But routine is why they matter. These are the touchpoints a customer returns to again and again, and inconsistency here can erode the trust you’ve built up elsewhere.
How on-demand BSL interpreting changes the equation
Pre-booked BSL interpreting works well for planned appointments. You know the date, you know roughly what’s needed, and you can arrange a qualified BSL interpreter in advance.
But it does nothing for the touchpoints that come up without warning, like the query that lands mid-afternoon, the complaint that needs resolving today or the account issue that can’t wait for a scheduled slot.
This is where on-demand video interpreting can change what’s possible. Sign Solutions’ InterpretersLive! platform connects your Deaf customers with a qualified BSL interpreter in real time, without any advance booking. For your team, this doesn’t mean you need to have a BSL interpreter permanently on-site or on call. Instead, you can offer access to a video interpreter at the moment it’s needed, rather than telling the customer to call back once you’ve booked one.
Building BSL interpreting into your customer journey
Start by mapping your existing touchpoints and being honest about which ones currently depend on a phone call or a verbal interaction with no alternative. That map will usually reveal more gaps than you expect, not because your business has ignored accessibility, but because most customer journeys were built around processes designed for people who can hear.
Your front-line staff need to know how and when to bring in an interpreter as a normal part of handling a query, not as a special request that requires approval. If using InterpretersLive! feels like an exception to your process, your staff won’t reach for it under pressure, and the customer will bear the cost of that hesitation.
Make the option visible, too. A Deaf customer shouldn’t have to ask whether interpreting support exists. It should be clear from the first point of contact that it does, and how they can access it. That might be as simple as an icon on your contact page sitting alongside your phone number, or a line on your booking confirmation email explaining how to reach the team via BSL.
Small signals like these tell your Deaf customers that the option isn’t hidden away for those who happen to know to ask.
Pairing this with Deaf Awareness Training can help close the gap between having the right tools and using them well. Staff who understand basic communication principles, such as facing the person directly, not covering their mouths and not defaulting to a hearing companion, will get far more value out of the interpreting support you’ve put in place.
How can Sign Solutions help?
Accessible customer journeys aren’t built from a single change at a single point of contact. They come from making sure support is there consistently, across every stage a Deaf customer might need it.
At Sign Solutions, we work with businesses and public sector organisations across the Midlands and beyond to embed BSL interpreting support throughout the customer journey. Whether that’s on-demand access through InterpretersLive!, qualified BSL interpreters for in-person appointments, or Deaf Awareness Training to help your team use these tools with confidence, we can help you build something that works end to end.
To find out more, call us on 0121 447 9620, email bookings@signsolutions.uk.com or get in touch via a BSL video interpreter.
