<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=905697862838810&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">

Subscribe

    7 Components of a Complaint Management Program

    We live in a day and age where consumers are all too happy to verbalize their complaints. Whether via Amazon reviews, Yelp, or social media posts, consumers have the ability to give their virtual thumbs up or down to let the world know how they feel about a product, service, or business.

    For financial institutions, it’s particularly important to address consumer complaints. One of the most effective ways to do this is by implementing a comprehensive complaint management program. A complaint management process empowers financial institutions in the following ways:

    • Helps you to prevent member loss

    • Allows you to self-identify and take corrective action

    • Identifies opportunities for improvement

    • Gives you the opportunity to address any regulatory violations that come to light

    • Can help you proactively prevent litigation by resolving complaints immediately

    To help you achieve this, your complaint management procedure should have seven key components:

    1. Policies and Procedures

    All complaints should be handled and governed by clearly written policies and procedures, ensuring your institution provides a consistent, compliant, and non-discriminatory avenue for conflict resolution.

    2. Clear Channels of Communication

    Your customers need an easily accessible channel to write reviews or submit complaints. It could be helpful to set up dedicated email addresses, website forms, or telephone extensions to receive customer feedback and resolve issues.

    3. Investigation Process

    If one of your customers should lodge a complaint through any of your defined channels, it’s critical that you have a clearly defined system for addressing the complaint. The process for resolving complaints should include:

    • A recorded interview or written email in which the customer describes the problem

    • An interview with the appropriate staff members involved

    • Checking the complaint against current best practices, policies, and procedures, and all relevant laws and regulations.

    4. Written Response

    Once your institution has thoroughly investigated the complaint, you should resolve the issue in writing and follow appropriate regulatory response standards to ensure that the details of your resolution process are being properly recorded. This also allows your institution to provide a clear and precise explanation of your actions for the customer who made the complaint and to record the date and manner of resolution.

    5. Corrective Action

    If any of the customer complaints indicates that illegal, discriminatory, deceptive, unfair, or improper practices have in fact taken place, your institution must take decisive corrective action to change the behavior. In some cases, this could require modifications to your current policies and procedures, employee training and monitoring, systems updates, or rewriting printed and web-based material.

    6. Retaining and Analyzing Data

    Your financial institution should have and follow a system for properly logging consumer complaints. Once it has been compiled, this data is a great source of insight that will allow you to recognize consumer trends, identify areas of risk, spot compliance violations, and diagnose any current weaknesses in your customers’ experience with your institution.

    7. Employee Education

    When considering your financial institution’s complaint management program, employee education should be a critical component. Employees must know how to manage and log consumer complaints. Institute appropriate training on these policies for any staff members who resolve complaints or may have the opportunity to receive a complaint from a customer.

    Complaints are inevitable. A proper complaint management program that addresses customer complaints in a timely, respectful, and proactive manner will help preserve your institution’s reputation, ensure high standards of compliance, provide data for identifying systemic product or process issues, and result in greater member satisfaction.

    For more information, click below to check out our ebook, The Right Tools for Risk Management.

    A version of this blog post was originally published on creditunions.com. Click here to read the original article.

    New call-to-action

    Related Categories

    Regulations & Compliance

    Amy Bailey

    Amy Bailey is the Director of Compliance with primary responsibilities of supporting, developing and managing compliance policies and procedures to ensure business operations are conducted in compliance with regulatory and legal requirements. She acts as the advisory contact for client inquiries and escalations for the SWBC collections outsourced services.

    You may also like:

    Regulations & Compliance Payments

    Adhering to Nacha’s Fraud Risk Management and Monitoring Rules

    As of March 18, 2022, Nacha’s account validation rule requires ACH originators of WEB entries to use a commercially reas...

    Regulations & Compliance Retirement & Succession Plans

    Is Your Retirement Plan Sponsor ERISA Compliant?

    In the recent Supreme Court case of Hughes vs. Northwestern University, current and former plan participants in two of t...

    Regulations & Compliance

    Compliance and Collections: Adhering to the FDCPA and Regulation F

    A new federal debt collection rule enacted under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), Regulation F, went into...

    Let Us Know What You Thought about this Post.

    Put your Comment Below.

    Blog-CTA-Icon_Webinar-Video

    FREE Webinar

    SWBC 2024 Economic Forecast

    Join our experts as they discuss the state of the economy in 2024 and beyond. 

    On Demand | Duration: 75 minutes

    Watch Now