As a business matter and as a regulatory matter, you need to know what your customers’ experience (real or perceived) can tell you about your reputation, operations, and compliance. Usually, a complaint comes at the end of a series of frustrations or perceived injustices; often early opportunities for resolution have been missed. Complaints are received in various media, including traditional and ‘social’ media and at various touchpoints in your organization, or from outside sources.

Regulators and litigators pay attention to customer complaints. The first step to getting ahead of the curve with regulators and litigators is to have the right processes and controls to ensure you are always the first to know and can address complaints at the first and least-escalated point of contact.

How do you handle that without a large and costly ‘complaint function?’

Too often, financial institutions handle input from customers in an ad-hoc, decentralized, reactive way that fails to aggregate related information and isolates useful information in the input from decision makers. Complaints are considered at best a customer service process or at worst as a distraction. Only on escalation do decision makers and legal counsel see complaints. This approach is not only inefficient but leaves blind spots in your ability to manage your operations.

Why not convert your input from customers into a unified workflow that provides you with valuable operational and compliance insight into the effectiveness of your execution?

ORM’s Consumer Complaints module creates a workflow custom to your organization, captures information at all points in the flow, and converts the narrative information in the complaint into useful data. Complaint data is integrated into your risk management process and is even linked into your automated risk assessment and reporting. You will be aware of spikes, trends, and successes in near real time.