Scenario:
As part of our client’s Consumer Duty planning activities, it identified significant challenges and shortfalls within its front-line operational teams to accurately and consistently identify and record complaints. The bank requested Square 4 review its current complaint-handling approach to ensure all customers receive a good outcome throughout the complaints process.
Activities:
- Assessment: We initially undertook a comprehensive review of all complaints-related activity, including a review of the bank’s complaints policies and processes, an evaluation of the front-line team’s knowledge and capability and an assessment of customer communications (telephone, chat and email) to asses that complaints were identified, recorded and managed to the regulatory expectations of the Consumer Duty and the bank’s commitment to a great customer experience.
- Recommendations: We identified various areas for operational improvement and provided the bank with a wide-ranging suite of recommendations for their customer-facing teams and specialist complaints function. All proposals were impact assessed and presented to the bank’s executive team to agree on a prioritised and coordinated set of activities. Following the implementation of process and systems changes, the bank agreed the up-skilling of all customer-facing staff was a significant priority.
- Training design and delivery: Working with the bank’s operational leads and internal L&D team, we designed a 1-day face-to-face Complaints Excellence workshop focusing on best practice complaints identification and management. Utilising our team of specialist L&D consultants, we delivered over 150 workshops in 3 locations, training over 3,000 employees over three months.
Result:
Square 4 delivered the Complaints Excellence training programme, significantly improving the banks’ first point of contact complaints management. Key metrics include:
- The number of complaints recorded at the first point of contact increased by 900% over four months
- Quality of the delivery of the programme achieved 5.3 out of 6
- Confidence levels of front-line staff increased by 60%
