Better visibility and predictability of complaint cases can create a competitive advantage. Peter Cregg, product director at ActiveOps, discusses the challenges of handling financial complaints and how businesses can speed up the backlog of case-based work.
According to the Financial Ombudsman, the number of complaints received by the authority has been steadily increasing in recent years, with 282,000 received between April 2021 and March 2022. While these figures are not as alarming as those from 2010, planning and resourcing in the management of operations is still challenging due to the complex nature of casework for each complaint.
Falling behind on meeting service level agreements (SLAs) will lead to fines for non-compliance with industry regulations, particularly in areas like anti-money laundering operations in banking. Due to the serious nature of money laundering, it is essential that operations in this area are as efficient as possible.
The need for speed – and accuracy
In the financial services sphere, the overall performance of dealing with customer complaints relies on feedback and insight. Without clear and accurate intelligence, a financial organisation can often fail to recognise where service improvements should be made to reduce consumer complaints. So, having a system where back-office operations teams can access valuable insights into how each level of customer experience is managed can drastically reduce the levels of complaints received in their case-based work.
A case-based workforce management solution can help teams manage to effectively plan resources to match caseload demand, reduce SLA failure, and reduce any exposure to regulatory risk for the business. Having the ability to identify areas where there is an increase in types of complaints; such as current account closures or recurring payment agreements, can help firms to improve financial products and services. It can also help improve the processes they have in place to deal with complaints, such as staff training, to respond to complaints more effectively.
Including these powerful capabilities within software gives managers real-time insight without having to waste time collating and analysing data, enabling faster and better decision-making. Operations leaders, in turn, will better understand which cases need prioritising to meet SLAs and predict the resources required to get everything done within SLAs – even clearing case backlogs.
The secret to casework operations
A case-based solution operates best when it combines case profiles, progress logs, SLA data with people, capacity, and skills information to create a complete view of an organisation’s caseload. By translating data into meaningful real-time insights, operations managers can tackle case backlogs across all areas of businesses, including financial complaints. This can reduce SLA failure and improve processes based on a deep understanding of the effort required to complete cases.
Operations managers and leaders can understand their caseloads and operations across the board with a highly responsive management system that:
• Provides real-time visibility into all cases – both at an aggregate and an individual level – enabling effective case management.
• Shows case and SLA data together, making it easy to see which cases need to be prioritised to avoid SLA failure.
• Reveals how much effort is required for every case and all the touchpoints that make up a case, helping businesses refine processes and eliminate bottlenecks.
• Shows the distribution of effort on cases so managers can assess the long tail of time-consuming cases.
• Analyses average handle time for different case types to improve long-term planning.
• Presents key production metrics to managers in real-time, helping managers manage resources and workload more effectively.
Instant SLA monitoring and detailed case insights
When managers can view how cases are progressing against their SLAs in real-time, it can be easier to spot which cases need prioritising to avoid SLA failure and its associated costs, allowing operations to remain on track.
Taking a deep dive into every case and seeing all case touchpoints gives insights into the effort it took to complete the case. With this information, team leaders can access a thorough understanding of cases and may well uncover new insights that lead to process improvements.
Case profiling
Being able to separate cases into several types based on their activities can help operations managers to better understand the workload. Seeing the balance of different case types in an operations plan can help uncover opportunities to upskill employees and reduce bottlenecks associated with case types. Even grasping the ability to understand average handling times for different case types will help businesses improve resource planning.
With an effortless distribution of cases, managers can:
• Instantly see how a team’s effort is distributed across cases.
• Identify cases that are sucking up a team’s time.
• Ensure the right resources to meet demand by understanding the arrival pattern and variation of cases.
Key production metrics to manage performance
A real-time dashboard will show both team and individual performance using standardised measurements. This insight can be used to start productive and objective conversations about performance where needed, identify employees who may need support, celebrate high achievers, and keep operations running at optimal efficiency daily.
With a clear and accurate mix of real-time and historical data, plans can be simplified, meaning managers can be confident that all SLAs will be met, even in peak times. Having that ability to identify surplus capacity at other times that can be released for other activities, meaning risk levels are low and business objectives strengthened.
