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Unlocking the value of customer complaints
Complaints management as a strategic source of insights
Complaints management within most service-driven industries is not new. However, there is a broad spectrum of formality in processes and procedures, as well as how technology is employed. This paper explores the value organizations can unlock by moving up the complaints management maturity model.
Explore content
- Customer complaint management
- Getting started: The complaints management maturity model
- Moving up the maturity curve
- How leaders are unlocking
- Get in touch
The current state of customer complaint management
In the past decade, regulators and consumers have recalibrated their expectations around how organizations, both within financial services and beyond, should handle customer complaints. Across some sectors, it is now an understood regulatory expectation that organizations holistically focus on customer outcomes, be it through their direct interactions or how their products and services are offered. Significant consumer-centric reform, our instant ability to reach a wide audience through channels such as social media, and a number of very public consumer-focused regulatory actions all point to a clear need for all consumer-facing organizations to ensure they are acting in their customers’ best interest, which includes the way in which they address their customer complaints.
Complaints management within most service-driven industries is not new. Many major organizations have formalized their complaints management program. However, there is a broad spectrum of formality in processes and procedures, as well as how technology is employed. Technology systems across industries (as well as between organizations within the same industry) range from basic (disconnected, incomplete, and reactive) to advanced (integrated, proactive, and semiautomated). This spectrum often underpins an organization’s general attitude toward complaints management; some organizations still view complaints as a negative and address remediation in isolation (or as required), whereas others are investing in their complaints management program, resulting in an increasing ability to unlock value from captured data and insights and improving their organization’s overall ability to manage customer complaints.
Customer complaint management
Getting started: The complaints management maturity model
Through our work with executives undertaking the journey to develop capabilities to more effectively manage their organizations’ complaints processes, we have identified five distinct maturity stages, increasing in level of the overall structure, proactive management, and use of technology and data analytics.
While many organizations in the United States have implemented elements of a complaints management program which could be considered elements of formal and structured (stage 4) and even optimal and intelligent (stage 5), there are very few organizations (or industries) that can lay claim to achieving a stage 5 maturity level. As organizations move up the stages of the maturity curve, the more proactive they are in being able to resolve customer complaints (including the ability to preemptively identify and resolve issues). These organizations often capture and leverage data and use more advanced technologies.
Moving up the maturity curve
Understanding where your organization falls on the maturity curve is the first step toward developing an optimal and intelligent complaint management program. Executives should look at their complaints management process and system across three general dimensions (people, process, and governance) to determine their current state. After determining the current state, it is imperative to understand the desired future state to identify needed enhancements.
Leaders should define the roles and responsibilities of everyone involved in the complaints management process to understand the skills, knowledge, and training that will lead to better outcomes. By thinking critically about the relevant skills necessary for complaints management, leaders will be better equipped to put the right people in the right roles. For example, someone in a call center should have training and skills that include empathy, active listening, and the ability to accurately transcribe and document the issue, whereas the staff resolving the complaint should have additional skills such as conflict resolution, negotiation, and a deeper understanding of policies and applicable laws. It’s imperative, too, that these groups work together to provide a seamless complainant handoff. Leaders also need to define how their people’s performance is measured. Performance indicator(s) and incentives should be aligned to encourage teams to resolve complaints while focusing on the customer.
Leaders responsible for handling complaints should analyze their processes, systems, technology, and infrastructure to understand where there might be gaps, breakdowns, or failures. Key questions to consider include:
• Can our systems distinguish between customer dissatisfaction and a formal complaint?
• How formalized is our complaints and allegations management processes?
• What timelines, guidance, and policies do we have in place?
• How is our process articulated to the customer, and what are we doing to ensure their expectations are met?
A complaint management process should be formulaic and well-understood across the organization. Consistency in complaints management matters; outcomes should be consistent for customers when they raise similar issues. The processes should also be flexible and smart enough to triage complaints based on urgency, prioritization, and categorization. Embedding technology that can automate this with robotic process automation (RPA), machine learning, and advanced analytics can be a major leap forward for many organizations. Regardless of how organizations implement their process, it is imperative that they meet applicable regulations for their industry.
Executives need to think critically about what they report out and to whom their reporting goes. Complaints management has historically been an afterthought and not seen as a value driver. The right governance and robust analytics and reporting as part of their management information systems (MIS) can change the conversation from complaints being a necessary afterthought into a real-time view of how an organization is performing in a certain area. A technology stack that categorizes complaints using natural language processing and then aggregating complaints in real time can lead to quicker solutions and risk mitigation. For example, if 100 people in one geography complain that they received an incorrect balance transfer interest rate, this type of system can alert the appropriate person, who can then proactively resolve these complaints while working on a longer-term solution to remediate the issue. These sorts of proactive, customer-centric responses can quickly turn a complainant into an advocate while informing the organization of issues they need to resolve.
By targeting actions, processes, and systems within the complaints process, resulting in a move up the Complaints Management Maturity Curve, organizations can expect to unlock increasing value, such as:
- Increased structure and efficiency, driving more transparent and timely outcomes
- Increased levels of customer satisfaction while improving the overall customer experience
- Increased risk- and issue-sensing ability; proactively identifying potential noncompliance and hotspots to manage complaints
- Reduced longer-term cost through decreased operational, legal, regulatory, and compliance risk(s)
How leaders are unlocking the value of complaints through improved technology and data analytics
Leading organizations are investing in advanced complaints management capabilities to improve process efficiency, proactively understand issues communicated by customers, and unlock value from captured complaints data. As a result, complaints are no longer just a cost of doing business, but can also be a strategic source of insights to improving the overall customer experience, help support business decisions, and influence brand reputation.
Learn more about how technology and data analytics can unlock the value of complaints by reading our full report.
Let’s talk
For more information on the value a mature complaints management system can provide, we encourage you to contact one of our complaints management specialists:
Gina Primeaux |
James Siciliano |
Satish Lalchand |
Don Williams |
Sara Kiernan |
