Supporting clients in a crisis with expert complaint handling

When there's a problem, getting the right help and support to customers is a priority. Our specialist, skilled team was able to step in and help a new client in a matter of days.

Issue

A spate of stories about financial services complaints had appeared in the media. One financial services business contacted us, having recognised the need to respond to the surge in negative media, by boosting its own complaint handling capability. They also realised that this couldn’t be achieved quickly enough by handling it internally.

Establishing a specialist complaints team would be the most effective way to demonstrate their commitment to their customers. This meant recruiting, training and deploying a completely new team within a matter of weeks. And this was not an existing client of ours, but a brand new one.

Insight

Within the financial services world, contact agents need a wide range of very specific skills. Not just contact centre knowledge, but also specialist complaint handling, experience of supporting vulnerable customers, awareness of fraud and money-laundering and the latest regulatory procedures.

Our approach

Capita Customer Management has a dedicated business that specialises in case handling, remediation, and complaints management and resolution. With our help, the client was able to put a brand new complaints handling team in place little more than days after first contacting us.

The client initially invited us to price a requirement for 10 complaint handlers. Almost immediately after the contract was agreed, the client realised they would need a larger resource pool, including managers and a separate fraud investigation team, with a total headcount in excess of 30FTE.

Within two weeks, the enlarged complaints team had been recruited and was in place working at the client’s premises.

But, during the first month, the requirement continued to grow within the areas of complaint handling, fraud telephony and services, and operations clearing services.

After six weeks, we had brought together a team that now stood at 80FTE, operating across multiple workstreams and two client sites. Our original three-month engagement was extended, with the client requesting the Capita teams be kept on until year-end.

The impact

In a tough year for the client, the Capita team’s rapid mobilisation of a variety of roles has helped them to rectify and respond to customers promptly and with the right support. There are certainly more challenges to come, but our provision of over 80FTE across three different areas and two different sites means the client is equipped to tackle them.

The client is able to prove  to the market and their customers that they are serious about resolving issues, and doing what’s right.