Maintaining clients’ loyalty may be challenging in the case of complex products and business processes. And this is what often happens in financial institutions. An important area in after-sales processes concerns handling complaints submitted to the banks. Weaknesses in this process undermine the confidence in institutions, worsen their image and aggravate the risk of customers leaving, which becomes particularly likely in the era of ubiquitous competition.
Time pressure and product complexity are but a few of the factors affecting the quality of complaint handling. Additionally, the need to analyse each complaint on its merits is conducive to high labour consumption and operational costs resulting from a disorderly process. The risk of making costly mistakes is also on the rise. A dedicated, process automating tool is what comes up against the challenges.
Effective and Comprehensive Communication
BPM (Business Process Management) systems covering the entire process are perfect for complaint handling. At the initial stage, clients should have an option to request via a variety of electronic channels – in writing or in person, at an establishment. It is also important to ensure that the forms are intuitive when filling them in. It translates into time savings and a more effective verification on the bank’s part. It is vital for the staff to have an ongoing access to the process at every stage of it. The option to complete the entire process at its very registration is also crucial.
The person submitting the complaint should be informed of its current status, e.g. accepted for examination, positive decision, rejected. An option to create notification templates sent automatically to clients makes the process much easier. Once prepared, messages can be sent via multiple channels, including texts or e-mail. Both the form of communicating with the client and the notification moments should be easily configurable. All of the solutions make communicating with clients transparent and effective.
Quick and Confident Decision Making
Complaints are characterised by various degrees of complexity. They may concern the operating of systems, products, settlements, procedures, safety or a failure. It is important to break them down into categories and assign to relevant persons or teams to make the handling process the shortest possible. A decision engine may play a crucial role in this case. Automation rules enable quick redirection of a complaint to a person dedicated to a given issue, without the need for manual decision making. It is possible to rank the complaints based on some pre-defined parameters. It shortens the analysis time for each complaint and makes handling incoming submissions more effective.
While planning to implement a complaint handling solution, it should be taken into account whether the system enables monitoring of the statutory times for processing. The system should ensure consistency of the implemented processes with PN-EN ISO 10002 containing the guidelines for handling complaints at an organisation. Control over processes should be possible thanks to accurate reports accessible in the system.
Handling a variety of clients’ submissions is also an important feature of an advanced solution. Apart from complaints, those may be transaction orders, queries, opinions. In this way, comprehensive tracking of communication with clients is possible.
All Actions in One Tool
A complaint handling system should enable automating the entire process (end-to-end): from remote registration, through decision making, to passing on the complaints to back office systems and replying to the client.
A comprehensive process is possible to model in a BPM class system. Handling all the complaint-related activities in one system significantly affects user’s work ergonomics. An advanced tool enables high flexibility and efficiency of processing. An authorised user may on its own configure a process in line with the ongoing business needs. For instance, new stages of the process or persons assigned to a case may be added. The course of the process can be changed with respect to new products or groups of clients.
A modern BPM solution lends itself integrate easily with other systems. Information on the client, its products and the track record of cooperation can be easily downloaded any time. Integration with other accounting systems of the institution enables a full automation of posting the transactions with the use of interfaces/API. On the other hand, the roles of persons handling the process are assigned thanks to cooperation with the systems managing users’ rights.
BPM System: a Level Up
In line with the above assumptions, complaint handling processes may be automated thanks to the Ferryt Platform by DomData. A dedicated business module, Ferryt Complaints, makes it possible to optimise work, automate decision making and reduce operational costs at an organisation.
The Ferryt Complaints module ensures on-line monitoring of client service indicators with the use of managerial reports and dashboards. Thanks to a clear presentation of aggregate information concerning individual client service processes and the option of data mining, the solution effectively supports enterprises in striving for operational excellence.
The effectiveness of complaint handling at an institution running Ferryt Complaints grows, which will surely also enable reaching a higher client servicing standard. And this, in turn, will contribute to client satisfaction.
