From getting a mortgage to managing savings, banks are essential to modern living. But sadly, things don’t always go right when it comes to interacting with these large and often faceless institutions. Complaints in particular often prove difficult for both customer and institution, and in the aftermath of recent banking scandals like the MBNA PPI crisis and the TSB online access debacle in the UK, many banks have decided to make their complaints management procedures more watertight. Here’s a round-up of how the issue has played out over the last few months and years.
Controversial banking issues
Banks are always in the news these days, and so in some ways it’s no surprise that they receive a high rate of complaints. The MBNA PPI scandal is just one of the stories. When it occurred, it left many customers wondering whether or not they had had payment protection insurance sold to them without their express agreement – a development which seriously harmed consumer trust. And it’s the same story around the world, too. Just recently in the UK, for example, TSB customers found that they were unable to log in to their online banking for days on end – leading to complaints from customers across the country.
These aren’t isolated incidents, and the list goes on. But despite the many problems which have cropped up over the last few years, it’s definitely the case that some banks are trying to respond by tightening their complaints management procedures and learning from their mistakes as much as possible. In part, this is to do with the risk of fines: thanks to the plethora of regulations which govern banks, they can face substantial financial hits if they do not respond to complaints in a way that regulators deem to be adequate enough. The fines can be substantial, and one estimate of the total amount that American and European banks had to shell out in all fines in 2014 alone was north of $65 billion.
But it’s also to do with the changing world of communications and reputation management: now that customers can complain publicly on social media within just minutes of an issue arising, the banks are responding on the whole more quickly. What’s more, the ease with which consumers can switch banks – especially in some European countries – free of charge and even sometimes with incentives for doing so means that banks have to act faster in order to keep custom.
In terms of structural and policy changes aimed directly at the complaints issue, one other way in which banks are managing to cut down on the number of complaints they receive is by managing data more effectively. Some banks, for example, were previously guilty of asking their staff to categorize problems into rigid and inflexible typologies, and this ended up meaning that when complaints data got analyzed there was no scope to think about the complexities and nuances of the customer’s issue. That is now becoming a little less common, and sophisticated software means that the customer service teams on the front line of the complaints world are often now able to assign complaints across multiple, crisscrossing categories.
Looking to the future
With the rise in online banking and Internet live chat-based complaints procedures clearly representing what complaining may look like in the future, it’s apparent that more investment needs to be directed to this area. While some banks have the resources to respond to complaints in just a few minutes, others still find themselves either unable or unwilling to put enough staff on the screens or the phones responding to calls.
The new-found heavy focus on complaints being resolved through the Internet will also mean that it becomes increasingly important to look at the software structures of complaints systems, too. Complaints can often contain sensitive information such as account balances, details on how users access their banking, and more. As a result, banks will need to start investing in defense mechanisms for their complaints management systems to keep ahead of the hacker curve, as these spaces may well become vulnerable to malicious forces.
Complaints continue to be big deals in the banking world, and there’s no reason to believe that will go away any time soon. But things are beginning to change: as banks act to prevent fines and retain their customers, complaints are starting to be managed a little better. And with the emphasis likely to shift to resource allocation and complaints data security in the near future, banks will hopefully remain in tune with their customers’ needs and work to resolve complaints speedily and efficiently.
