Playbook, fintech app
A complaint starts a clock, so it has to be recorded rather than absorbed
In most markets a complaint against a regulated firm is not a mood, it is the start of a defined process with published timescales attached and often an external route if the firm does not resolve it in time. That makes the most dangerous thing a helpful assistant can do here obvious: talk somebody down so effectively that nothing is ever recorded. The correct handling explains the procedure exactly and makes sure the message reaches a person.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for complaints holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The response has a procedural consequence rather than only a service one, because in many markets the firm's own timescales begin when the complaint is received.
- A sympathetic reply that resolves the feeling and records nothing is the specific failure mode this cell exists to prevent.
- Most complaints do not contain the word complaint, they contain a fee somebody did not expect or a fortnight of silence.
- The wording of a complaints or protection statement is drafted deliberately, so it is quoted rather than summarised.
How it arrives
- i want to make a formal complaint
- nobody has come back to me for two weeks
- i was charged a fee i never agreed to
- how do i escalate this above your support team
- what happens if you do not resolve it
- can i take this further if i am not happy with the answer
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The complaints procedure with its published timescales | How a complaint is made, what acknowledgement to expect and when, and how long the firm has to respond. Index it as written, because the timescales in it are commitments rather than descriptions. |
|---|---|
| The external escalation route, in your compliance team's own words | Where a customer can take an unresolved complaint in your market, and after how long. Quote it exactly. A paraphrase of an escalation right is a misstatement of one, and this is the paragraph a regulator would read first. |
| The fee schedule | A large share of complaints are about a charge somebody did not expect, and a clear published fee often resolves the underlying question even though the complaint still has to be recorded. |
| Every contact route, including the non digital ones | Postal address, telephone, and whatever your procedure names as an accepted way to complain. Some people will not use a form, and refusing to acknowledge a route your own procedure lists is itself a problem. |
The reply
You can make a formal complaint in writing through the complaints procedure, which sets out the acknowledgement you should receive and the timescale for a full response. If you are still not satisfied once that timescale has passed, the procedure also sets out where you can take it further, and that route is available to you regardless of what happens here. I am going to take your details so this is recorded properly rather than left in a chat window, so please leave your name, your email and a short description of what happened.
It quotes the procedure rather than characterising it, and it mentions the external route as an existing right rather than as something to be discouraged or earned. The third sentence is the important one: it is explicit about recording, which is what stops the exchange from ending as a resolved feeling with no record behind it. It offers no view on whether the complaint is justified, which is not the assistant's judgement to make.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any message that names a complaint, describes an unresolved issue, or asks how to escalate.
I want to make sure this is recorded rather than ending here. Leave your name, the email on the account and a short description of what happened, including any dates, and it will go to the team that handles complaints under the published procedure.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Any view on whether a complaint is justified or likely to succeed.
- Anything that discourages, delays or adds a condition to escalation.
- A timescale or external route that is not written into your own published procedure.
- A prediction about what an external reviewer would decide.
Questions
- Will an assistant accidentally suppress complaints?
- It can, and that is the risk to design against rather than a reason to avoid one. An assistant that answers the underlying question warmly and never takes the details has absorbed a complaint. Wording the handover so it triggers on the description rather than on the word is what prevents it.
- Should it mention the external route unprompted?
- Where your published procedure sets it out, yes, quoted as written. It is a right the customer already has, and a firm whose assistant only mentions it when pushed is making a choice that reads badly in exactly the review where it would be examined.
- What if somebody is complaining about something we cannot see?
- That is nearly every complaint, since it will concern an account or a payment. It does not change the handling: quote the procedure, take the details, and let the people with access establish the facts.
Keep reading
- Everything for a fintech appFees, limits and identity checks are safe ground. Balances, transactions and anything reading as a personal recommendation are not.
- Handling complaints in generalThe job is to route, not to resolve. Acknowledge without conceding, name the escalation route, and get it to a person fast.
- The one handover in this set where a contact form is the wrong mechanismSomebody watching money leave an account cannot wait on an email reply. Putting the number in the refusal text rather than composing it.
- The file outlasts the account, and that is a duty rather than a choiceClosure does not end a retention duty. Why erasure here is partial by law rather than by preference, and why chat removes nothing.
- A procurement reviewer and a frightened individual, typing the same wordA corporate assessment and a nervous customer arrive in the same box. Neither is served by being answered as the other one.
Try it on your own material
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