Turning Customer Complaints into Clues for Improving Service Interactions

In general, no one likes a complainer. Complainers are cast as the antagonists in customer service scenarios. These are the customers that you politely diffuse and move to the next interaction. Their issues and concerns can vary considerably, from the frivolous to the legitimate, but most contact center agents and tellers would prefer to avoid them entirely. However, there is another way to look at this type of customer. Keep reading to learn how these “complainers” may actually help enhance your business offerings.

Turning Complaints into Opportunity

In today’s environment of consumer activism and omni-channel interactions, complaints can be made by telephone, email, chat, text message or over social media. While addressing complaints via so many channels can be overwhelming, these comments can actually provide real value to organizations that are paying attention.

First, it’s important to realize that for banks today “getting a handle” on the situation is a requirement. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) encourages—and may sometimes be considered to even solicit—complaints from consumers. There is even a special section of the CFPB website for submitting complaints. The data collected in this and other forums are being used to identify areas for further investigation as the Bureau launches a variety of initiatives to help protect consumers.

And, while this program may feel like a thorn in your side, it does help manage the new rules and regulations, and also categorizes complaints into individual cases. Retail financial institutions and other service providers are then expected to respond within specific timeframes to resolve customer issues. This push forward is a critical first step to driving high-quality, high-value service experiences.

One way to tackle the large amounts of feedback entering an organization via all the channels highlighted earlier is through analytics software. Many businesses will find there is great potential in using the power of these solutions to analyze complaints, identify trends and convert insights into actionable intelligence. With such technology, users can:

• Track complaints for transactions completed by individual employees and schedule coaching and training to address issues and improve performance
• Discover trends as they relate to products and services provided by competitors (e.g., “Why don’t you offer XYZ product like bank-around-the-corner?”) to develop new offerings for your markets
• Capture potential process or regulatory compliance issues and evaluate them for risk and needed remediation. You can then make corrective changes to avoid fines or other penalties
• Proactively reduce complaints by acting on the information that’s already coming into your organization, and avoid negative impact on your brand reputation
• Improve service quality and customer experience by monitoring complaints on an ongoing basis

Denying that there are issues or seeing complaints as a hindrance is the old way of thinking. Banks have an opportunity to use complaints as clues to identify where additional actions may be needed—evaluate the situation, take corrective actions and improve the customer experience. Changing to this new way of thinking, and showing that you are doing the right thing for customers, can go a long way to help build consumer trust in banking.

Learn more in the complimentary eBook titled, The Value of Early Consumer Complaint Detection: Avoiding Fines While Improving Customer Experience.