No one wants to record complaints. In a perfect world, every customer is completely satisfied and every system works exactly the way it’s supposed to. 

But that’s not reality. You can’t fully prevent complaints from happening, but you can be prepared to respond to them in a way that stops them from growing into bigger problems.

Complaint management is an essential function of any business, and 83% of customers feel more loyal to companies that respond and resolve their complaints. In order to comply with regulations, banks need swift complaint management.The acting director of the CFPB recently reinforced the expectation that “companies provide substantive responses that address the issues consumers describe in their complaints.” 

You need a system that makes this process as painless as possible for both your employees and customers. Salesforce is that system. Here’s how you can use Salesforce to manage your complaints:

Why Salesforce for complaint management?

Have you ever had to rekey mountains of data putting a complaint into an external system that doesn’t have the right contact information? Are you confident about the security of your data? Outdated complaint management systems fail to offer visibility, security, and collaborative tools that can accelerate the process, but Salesforce brings all of your data and processes together to drive operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.  

Data security is only going to become a more pressing issue as time goes on. An Excel spreadsheet doesn’t offer the security or visibility that companies need. Aggregating data on a monthly basis may be fine for high-level reporting, but doesn’t support the workflow and follow-up that needs to happen after a complaint is logged. Salesforce protects your data while giving you visibility into the activities of front-end employees, so you know in real-time if there’s a complaint being registered elsewhere. Responding to a claim needs to be timely, and you should have the ability to send off an email immediately to the customer that says, “We acknowledge that you’ve complained about something, we’re looking into it, and will resolve it as quickly as possible.”  

Complaint management in Salesforce’s Financial Services Cloud is far more than tracking a ticket. It helps you:

• Monitor the most important things you need to know from a compliance perspective 
• Report on themes and trends so you can uncover how to get ahead and fix larger problems you may face as an organization
• Surface complaints so they don’t get lost in the ether
• Gain greater visibility into management 
• Build out feedback objects that capture the escalation of a case
• Send SLA letters automatically so the client knows their complaint has been processed 

With specific compliance rules regarding the time period in which you respond to complaints, Salesforce helps you move faster. If someone doesn’t respond or update a complaint within the first 24 hours, it can be automatically escalated to the manager of that group. And if a branch’s frontline staff has to log a complaint against a manager, security protocols within Salesforce can prevent the manager from seeing that complaint. 

From a marketing perspective, you can also use Salesforce to help drive suppression. If a client has an active complaint, you don’t want them to continue receiving marketing communications that might alienate them further. When their complaint is logged, Salesforce can automatically suppress them from certain campaigns. It will also drive notifications to the other relationship teams who are supporting that client, letting them know someone submitted a complaint and they need to be aware of it. 

Implementing a complaint management system in Salesforce

Silverline worked with a Midwest community bank to implement a custom complaint management system within Financial Service Cloud that provided enhanced reporting, trend analysis, and forecasting of complaints. This bank’s previous complaint management system was built on legacy technology, hard to update, and had zero reporting capabilities. It was difficult to collaborate and resolve the issues on the platform due to the amount of “chair swiveling” activity. 

Once the bank had their core data integrated with Financial Service Cloud, the solution was able to tie the feedback source, collaborators, and SLAs with escalations. You can launch this entire process from the customer record, which captures the date and time, feedback type, feedback source, sensitive info options (private sharing settings), preferred method and time of contact, type of complaint (Process and Procedures, Products and Services, Client Experience), dynamic business line impacts, and additional key indicators.

Our solution delivers full reports and dashboards across all lines of business for complaints and complaint management. This allows for transparency around complaints as well as ability to make complaints “Private” if needed. Email alerts notify management when complaints are not worked and SLAs are not met, and complaints are automatically escalated to management after a certain period of time. 

Resolve complaints more effectively

Managing complaints in a timely manner is vital for both customer satisfaction and regulatory compliance. Salesforce streamlines the process so that teams know exactly what complaints are coming in and the steps they need to take to resolve them, with enhanced security protocols that protect your data. Find out how Silverline’s experts can help.