Complaints Handling and Volume Control
In industries such as the finance sector, offering the best customer experience includes being able to handle high call volumes and complaints. Money, debt, and other financial issues can be difficult for customers and clients alike, so ensuring that there is a good customer experience that both solves financial issues and supports business growth is a must.
Whether there is an increase in debt due to rising costs or a spike in scam activity leading to high call volumes, being able to respond quickly and efficiently is necessary for your customer satisfaction and business operations.
Here, we will explore how we’ve been handling complaints and call volume control for our customers and how this can be beneficial within the financial sector.
The challenges
In the finance industry, being able to offer your customers quick and efficient communication is vital for the financial health and benefits of both your company and your customers. Whether it is a sensitive subject, such as debt, or something that needs fast action, having the right advisors in place is necessary for this sector. Some challenges your business might experience include:
Complaints handling
Your customer service team needs to be in a position to offer complaints handling with ease. The multifaceted dynamic of a contact centre such as ours has the ability and know-how to manage even the toughest conversations when it comes to your customer’s finances. Complaints are a common part of the customer experience, but how they are managed can make the difference between client retention and loss – making it essential for finance businesses to have the best customer experience possible to maintain a competitive edge in this tight market.
Customers often contact customer support with a high level of frustration or emotion, especially when it comes to their finances. From scam activity to debt, this can be a tense environment that needs to be handled with compassion and care, finding a solution that works for your business and your customers. Having advisors with the right training in place can ensure better call management – which is why we dedicate 150,000 hours of training and development into our teams every year.
Poor complaint handling can be detrimental to your business’s reputation and customer relations, making it crucial for your advisors to have the right tools, training, and authority to address complaints efficiently and effectively. Balancing quick resolution with quality service is essential to reduce dissatisfaction and winback customers, even during difficult situations. Failing to provide strong complaint handling can lead to customer loss, a poor business reputation, and repeat difficulties.
Volume control
Call volume can also make providing a top customer experience difficult. Difficult financial times, such as Christmas, can make finances tight for your customers. This can often lead to a ramp period where your call volumes scale. Being able to answer all calls in a timely manner is essential for the benefit of your customers and your business. Ensuring that all timely problems are escalated and resolved quickly and efficiently is a must within a sector such as finance.
It is also important to note that these challenges often work together. If your complaints handling isn’t effective, you can often find your customers repeatedly calling to resolve the same issue. Being able to offer one-stop resolution is vital for the movement of high call volumes and ensuring that your advisors have the time to address each concern with the right level of compassion and dedication that is needed.
Strategies for effective complaint handling
Developing strong strategies to manage these challenges is a must for the smooth running of your financial business. It is essential that you have the right infrastructure and advisors in place to be able to manage and scale towards the growing complaints and call volumes that you might find within your industry. During a tense financial time, being able to provide expert customer experiences is a must for the satisfaction and ease of mind that your customers need.
Some strategies for developing your customer experience include:
Expert advisors
One strategy your customer service team needs to adopt for complaint handling is developing an advisor’s experience. Advisors are representatives of your business and have the power to escalate or resolve your customers’ complaints. In an industry such as finance, your advisors will need to have the right level of empathy and compassion to handle sensitive information and manage complaints. From growing frustrations with accrued debt to closing accounts for passed loved ones, there are plenty of moments when an advisor will need to manage difficult and sensitive situations.
Outside of training and development, supporting your advisors with strong scripting strategies is also important. At Kura, we look at the way your advisors communicate, especially at the beginning of a call, to ensure that you’re asking for the right information at the right time to ensure that your customers are being supported in the right and most efficient way. Developing your scripts can negate call drop-offs and ensure one-stop resolutions by better understanding your customers’ main complaints and frustrations at the start.
Escalating complaints for your customers
Some complaints simply need escalating, and it is important that your advisors and customer service teams know when this is important to do, and when it isn’t. Establishing clear escalation pathways can give your advisors the support they need when it comes to difficult conversations or more complex complaints which require a higher authority to sign off on resolutions. By adopting a strong complaint escalation hierarchy, you can ensure that all customers are receiving the dedication and attention they need to ensure quicker resolution. This can also help boost advisor morale and ensure minimal stress levels, even during ramp periods, as all advisors have the tools and support they need to address concerns and complaints in a structured way with a correct, tried and tested process.
Feedback and continuous improvement
Feedback and continuous improvement are important strategies for managing complaints and call volume across any sector, including the financial industry. By asking for customer feedback, your business can better ensure that your processes and complaints management are working to improve customer satisfaction and the overall experience.
We believe people are at the heart of what we do, and hearing your customers out is just as important for the customer service experience as any other part of your business. Gathering real-time data from your customers and ensuring that they have the right access to the tools, resources, and support that they need can ensure that your business is providing the complaint management support needed to resolve customer problems and grow your customer loyalty.
Our complaint handling and call volume management excellence
At Kura, we have over a decade of experience helping large organisations across the UK improve their complaint management and volume handling. By offering better strategies to resolve customer complaints and frustrations quicker and more efficiently, you can ensure fewer callbacks, which could be another growing sense of frustration for your customers. No one wants to call back or attempt to resolve an issue that should’ve been resolved the first time around, so we are dedicated to showing complaint-handling excellence across all industries.
One of our clients struggled with complaint management. Advisors did not get the crucial details needed to resolve problems effectively and quickly, and there was an increasing number of call volumes due to the poor service being provided.
As a result, we investigated the advisor’s approach and the inventory of complaints to find the real issues behind customer complaints and the ways these had been managed. In order to improve complaints, we identified and addressed several critical issues affecting complaint handling and call volume management.
Communication gaps and aged complaints, 33% over 100 days, were causing problems with customer complaint handling and requiring rework for resolutions. As such, we took proactive steps by reallocating resources, upskilling advisors, creating a skill matrix, and setting up dedicated teams to handle older complaints. Regular meetings with the utilities partner and daily case reviews ensured better communication and streamlined processes across all parties.
Through these efforts, we were able to reduce overdue, aged complaint (>1 year) cases by 72% over a six-month period, as well as reduce escalations needed by 90% with better advisor complaint handling. This also resulted in 2198 resolved complaints, with the average complaint taking 19 days to resolve – a strong reduction from the previous complaints lasting 100+. This shows the importance of having strong advisors with the right training, skills, and communication pathways to improve complaint handling and reduce the call volume.
See our case study for managing sensitive and high importance complaint work here.