Martin Dodd:

Hello, everyone. My name is Martin Dodd I’m the CEO of Huntswood and welcome to today's podcast. I'm going to be talking to you today, building on the Complaints Outlook 2021. Today, we're going to be picking up on the second theme, which was all about speaking to the right person straight away. So we're going to get into a really good discussion and just deep dive into it and look at the different ways that firms can make the most of this. I'm joined today by Gavin Halliday, who's the Chief Disruption Officer even, it would help if I could actually get his title right, that'd be a good start, wouldn't it, at Virgin Money.

I've known Gavin for a number of years. He's got 30 plus years’ experience in financial services working for places like Bank of Scotland, Halifax. We worked together at Lloyd's Banking Group. He's then been at Clydesdale and now, obviously, with Virgin Money. Extensive experience in financial services and especially around complaint handling and customer service. So welcome, Gavin. Let's get straight into it and let's kick off the conversation between us because the topic we're talking about today is this issue around why is it speaking to the right person straight away on complaints so important? So, what are your thoughts on that?

Gavin Halliday:

Well, I could probably talk for half an hour without breaking, Martin. So what I'll do is start with some of the headings, for me, the first heading is, if somebody's got enough head of steam in order to want to actually complain, then they've probably already spoken to some other person on the buying side to get things resolved and if that's the case, then they're already irritated and they're already impatient. So there's a type thing, which is they want something resolved quickly.

The second thing is, is their personal time that’s being used up and therefore, they don't want to say they handed off three times to get to the right person. And the third is, they don't want to have to say the same thing three times. You and I have seen this many times in the past where you spend 20 minutes explaining the problem and at the end of it, the person says, "Yeah, that's not me. Let me pass you on to John or Jim." And then they say, "Hi, I'm Jim. What's the problem?" And you've got to start all over again.

So at a micro level, it's much about time and not wasting the customer's time and getting them to the right person as soon as possible that's got the right skill in order to resolve the problem for them because, it’s what happens after that, actually, that is the important thing, which is resolving the issue to the customer satisfaction and getting to the right person early in the process is critically important.

Martin Dodd:

I think it's really important and I agree with everything you just said. The debate I always tend to have with people is, when the customer first calls in, is it the person who answers the call who needs to resolve the complaint or can you get away with, this is probably the wrong word, but is it okay to transfer it to an expert and does that make any difference to the customer? What's your thoughts on that?

Gavin Halliday:

No, I don't think it has to be the very first person they speak to, but preferably the first person they speak to. Therefore, there are different types of complaints. If I take a simple complaint, I asked you to make a payment and you didn't. If the person that you speak to at least in the contact centre is capable of saying, "Well, hold on, what payment are you talking about? Oh, I see. Let me make it for you". Then, clearly, you want that person to deal with it. However, if they say, "I was setting up a derivative trade and you seem to have applied the wrong library to my loan," the person that answers the phone may not understand what this is let alone deal with it. And therefore, the first person speaking to them has got to be able to triage it, I think is probably the best way of describing it.

Is it something they can deal with? In which case, deal with it. If it's not something they can deal with it, as early as possible, identify that so that they can then say, "Actually, that, you need to go to some more expert person than me and I know who that person is." That's critically important that they don’t then cast around the organisation, trying to find a home for a complaint. One of the key skills in this process is, if you're going to hand it off, only hand it off once. Don't hand it off to somebody else who then hands it off to somebody else who then hands... and eventually you get to the right person.

They've got to do enough right at the outset to see what's the problem and maybe some of that's done in scripting, which is, "Okay, you want to complain, I may be able to answer it for you but maybe if you give me a couple of minutes on what it is, if I can answer I will or if I can't, I'll make sure you get the right person”. And as much as you can do a hot handoff, where they give that limited information in the handoff call and always introduce the person on the phone, “I'm now passing you on from Bill to Gene" and Gene is the expert. "Hello, I'm Gene, I understand you're complaining about your derivative trading" you move on.

Martin Dodd:

It's quite interesting. I get into debates with firms about it. As you know, I'm a huge fan of the first person trying to do as much as possible, but you raised some quite interesting points, which is, there is a slight danger with that model that you can try and go too far. I liked how you described it, which is, if it's simple and it's almost from the customer's eyes, I think that as a customer, if I'm phoning up, do I expect the person I'm calling to be able to answer it because it's relatively simple? I love the idea that that person can resolve it and is empowered to, and that sort of thing.

You make quite an interesting point that that may be in the word patterns or the scripting, that we get to, actually, but if I can't resolve it, I'm going to make sure I get you to the right person as quick as possible. I think that's about the identification early on, what is it that they're complaining about. Like you say, if it's about derivatives or investments or specialists like mortgages, you want to be getting it to the right person as quick as possible.

Gavin Halliday:

The other thing, Martin, is, and again, born out of experience, people don't always arrive on the call with a flashing light above their head saying, "I'm not ready to complain".

Martin Dodd:

Yeah, that’s a really good point.

Gavin Halliday:

Actually, some of the skill is in the listing skills in the first point of contact agent to pick up on tone and to pick up on pace and volume and to pick up on word patterns and content versus complaining or they’re not. Because as I say, unless there's a dedicated complaint phone line and some people have that or don’t, people on that line, you can assume that they're phoning to complain, but it's often it’s not, things turn into complaints rather than they start as complaints.

"I tried to make a payment and you haven't done it". That's the customer saying, maybe expressing some form of mild irritant that something hasn’t been done but they're not necessarily complaining and therefore, some of the skill at the front end is identifying that this person is beyond the point of just asking me to resolve their issue or their query and they actually want to complain about it. And there is a fundamental difference between resolving an issue that the customer is identifying, that's just issue resolution, as opposed to a form of complaint handling.

Martin Dodd:

That's a really interesting point, Gavin, because we both had experience of this where the customer phones, with an irritation, mild annoyance, but it's not a complaint, but actually the way it's dealt with on the call almost turns it into a complaint or, I have seen experiences and we've both seen this, where the process within the firm forces it into a complaint and you can almost hear the customer go, 'But I haven't got a complaint, I just want it resolved." They’re even following the steps to process.

Gavin Halliday:

I was actually about to say that, that sometimes with some complaints it’s not necessary to do that and usually, it's a process or a security level thing that drives that and that, for me, is a cardinal sin. It really is a cardinal sin where the process, the contact centre, the agent or the first point of contact person doesn't have the empowerment to do something and as a result of that, says, "The only way I can resolve this is if I turn it into a complaint because I know that Bert will see this along and the complaint handling team can sort it for you. I'm going to just log this as a complaint." And I think that's shooting yourself in the foot.

Martin Dodd:

Let's stick with that as a topic, then. What's your views on empowerment and authority levels for frontline call centre people?

Gavin Halliday:

I think it's essential, right. It's essential and I think you need to be a lot braver than you think in terms of giving people empowerment. A contact centre agent, we don't pay them very much. I'm going to give them a £10 authority level, right. What tends to happen is the default to, I'm allowed to give you 10 pounds, I'll give you 10 pounds as opposed to actually, it should be £500 and I'm not allowed to do that and therefore, I'm going to try shoehorn you, into £10.

The first thing is you definitely need to empower people and that's not just monetarily, quite often, customers just want to be listened to and they just want to, they just want their opportunity to vent. They want to believe that the person they're talking to is going to fix it, not just paying lip service to it. So the first thing is the empowerment to actually deal with it, if they can and know where to send them if they can't. Secondly, that they've got the financial authority in order to deal with the complaint in a way where the customer is surprised.

And I actually, typically speaking, that doesn't have to be, £2000, most complaints can be dealt with an authority level of a £100 or £500, and I think staff calibrate themselves. So if you give staff £500, they don't go, "Yeah," and then start punting £500 out every time because that’s the easy thing to do. Because it's such a large sum of money, they actually calibrate themselves. "I'm not going to do that unless it's absolutely necessary". But the flip side to that is if you only give them £10, then all they’ll give out is £10 and they'll use language, and we’ve seen this ourselves Martin, the language that comes out is, "Well, I think this is around the £10 range”, that sort of nonsense. The only thing that's driving that is their actual authority.

Martin Dodd:

Their authority levels.

Gavin Halliday:

Then there’s reticence then to either deal with it or have to pass it on to a team leader or whoever is at the authority level, because that's hassle and they've got to explain and so on and so forth. So the first bit is a financial empowerment and then, the second one is the ability to actually fix it.

Martin Dodd:

Yes.

Gavin Halliday:

I would extend empowerment to their capability and therefore access, again, organisations, and we've seen this in Banking and I'm sure it's true in other organisations where, "Oh, we don't let people have access to that system because it's a secret system or it's a specialist system," or it’s a what have you. Or I want credit cards and you're not getting access to the credit card system and what that does is, is hampers the agent's ability to then fix the problem because I've got to go and ask somebody else to do that, which is another step in the process. So I think empowerment is broader than just money. It's customer satisfaction. I'm going to send the customer some flowers because they seem like a nice person and that's all I needed to do. I'm going to send them a thank you card. Access to these things and as I say, access to the ability to fix it is as much of empowerment as paying compensation.

Martin Dodd:

It's quite interesting you picked up on that because I was going to say, there is a danger sometimes when I talk to firms, we have conversations and everyone talks about empowerment. Everyone assumes it's financial. Whereas actually, I see a lot of the time, things get passed into the complaints team, just because there's no other way of fixing it. Whereas I'm with you, if you can give people access to, usually, systems or the authority to do something on the system, that actually allows you to resolve a huge number of complaints. Your other point on financial that I think is quite interesting that I see and I've got two points on this that I see getting mixed up.

The first one is, people assume the amount you give is what everybody will spend, but I find colleagues of staffing firms are fabulous. If you give them £500 or £2000, they don't spend it. They calibrate themselves what they think is the right amount of money. And I think there's a danger we do disservice to the frontline because they're really good and they know what they're doing.

My second point, but I think it's a fascinating one that I sometimes see mixed up is, if a firms made an error and the error you need to correct is putting £400 back into the customer's account or whatever it may be, that isn't financial, that's just correcting the mistake, so you correct the £400. If you then need to give some flowers or a thank you card or £25 on top of that, the financial aspect is only really £25, and I see firms get that wrong as well. You made a mistake, you just got to put it right.

Gavin Halliday:

Yeah, no. The other thing, Martin, just as an aside, is, colleagues, it's developmental for colleagues to give them broader accountability. So there's also a broader piece around, if you empower your colleagues they feel trained better. They feel more valued themselves. I think there's a more holistic benefits to empowerment beyond the stuff that we've talked about and I think it can be community enhancing. It improves their decision-making, increases their personal confidence because somebody believes they're good enough to give them an authority level or an empowerment to do stuff. I think there are other ways of behavioral benefits for the business.

Martin Dodd:

Yeah. That's quite interesting seeing you kind of get full circle, don't you. The customer gets a better experience because the person's doing more and then the colleague or staff member actually feels like they're on a development journey because they're doing more and every time I've done research or insight into this, what the staff and colleagues tell you is, the more I can do for a customer, the better I feel, the more empowered I feel in my job, the more engaged I am so you almost get a ripple effect, the benefit's going. Yeah, I really like that.

Gavin Halliday:

There's one last thing just because, and you can tell, I think, this is important, the one last thing is, often, speed of resolution and being listened to, for customers, is way more important than having the complaint upheld or even having a big DNI payment met. And if you don't empower colleagues, you add in time delay, you add in authority levels and all of that moves the customer away. Not only am I going to solve this for you, Mr Customer, I have, past tense, sorted it for you Mr Customer.

Martin Dodd:

That's really powerful.

Gavin Halliday:

You know? That's the customer centric end of it where the customer says, "Gosh, I was expecting," because people have fairly low expectations in reality, when they come in, they expect to have a fight about these things.

And if the person who you speak to can deal with it and by deal with it I mean end to end, "I'm going to find an investigator, I’m going to fix it on the system, I'm going to give you your refund, I'm going to thank you. I'm going to send you flowers." If that all happens with the same person, the customer, actually then, leaves the call going, "Gosh, I didn't think that was going to happen. I was expecting ...” " So we don't really have a big bar to jump in reality because customers expectations are usually relatively low.

Martin Dodd:

And if you can deliver that on a regular basis, all the research I've read on this as well, if you do that well, the customer becomes almost an advocate of the brand and the research we did, we found they actually bought more products because they believe that, "Wow, this company's really impressive”. If they deal with this sort of stuff well, well, I'll just take more things from them because why wouldn't I? Because I know when something goes wrong, they just fix it."

Gavin Halliday:

Great, sure.

Martin Dodd:

Okay, then. Let's do the, we expect the first person can't answer everything because we all know that. So if they've got to be transferred to somebody else, what's your views on how you do that, the best way it works?

Gavin Halliday:

There are lots of models and that's a specialist team inside the contact centre or more experienced people, educated complaint handling team, a dedicated complaint handling team with some specialisations. In reality, the scale of the business will dictate how difficult that is and how big it is, but by in large, the answer is, you need to get it in a hot hand off to the person that will actually deal with it. And the skill of that is understanding the question you've been asked and then knowing who to pass it off to and you're not sitting with the organisation's telephone directory, guessing well, I think this person's job title looks like maybe they're the right person to speak to.

So there's a bit of effort required in and I think this is incumbent on the professional complaint handling team to help frontline complaint handlers to say, if they mention these words or they use these phrases or they use these sentences, they're talking about mortgages and mortgages are Bill and this is Bill's number. And if bill doesn't answer it, Andrew will get it if Bill isn't in. And if it's not Bill, it's ... Credit cards, it's this person. It's a national, it's the other, yeah, and I don't know if you've come across the expression, I'm sure you have, one of those repeaters in realities.

Martin Dodd:

Yeah, I have.

Gavin Halliday:

It's the realities and the repeaters which are the less frequent things. The things that contact centre agents may only see once a month or may only see once a year or may not even seen ever, they're the ones you need a fantastic process to identify quickly and say, "Look, can I stop you there? Actually, I need to pass you to this professional. While you're on the phone, I'm going to phone them up," and they answer the phone, "I've got Mr. So-and-so on the phone. Mr. So-and-so, I'm now going to pass you on to Mr. Dodd who will deal with your complaint," and make sure that Mr. Dodd can and even if Mr. Dodd can't, you've got to create the illusion that he can. He says, "I'll deal with that." Even in the professional complaint handling team, as much as you can, you don't then want to subdivide it. You want the person that gets it to own it and deal with it and they should be skilled enough to be able to gather the end information to help feed some of the other professional complaint handlers, if it's a multi-faceted complaint.

Martin Dodd:

You use the word hot handoff. I think I use the word warm hand off. I just wouldn't mind playing with that a bit because I have this conversation with lots and lots of people that, they'll say, "Ah, well it increases average handle time. It does this. It does that," but my view is, if I'm the customer, I've spoken to, let's say I've spoken to you Gavin, you've taken my first call, but it's actually about mortgage endowments and so I'm expecting to get transferred. I think when I talk to customers, what their expectation is, they know they're going to be transferred, but actually, they want to hear a bit of the transfer. They want to know that all the information's been passed and that actually, when I get to talk to, let's say I get to talk to Sue who's in the mortgage team and she's going to deal with it, actually, quite early on, I hear you talking to Sue explaining what the challenge is. Sue's going to own it. Sue's going to sort it out and that you're now leaving me with Sue, that's what you mean by that?

Gavin Halliday:

That's what I mean by a hot handoff. Yes. The other thing is, I don't buy the whole average handling thing because if you don't do that, you're kidding yourself on that the person you do a cold handoff to actually phones the customer back when they expect, and in the round, that customer phones the contact centre again so all you're doing is you're getting the same average handling time, but you're getting it in parts and therefore I just don't buy that.

Martin Dodd:

Yeah, I'm with you. I do understand when people do the really detailed MI (Management Information) on the average handle time, that it might appear to look a bit longer on that particular call, but that's because you're taking a snapshot of that particular call rather than the whole customer journey, the whole customer experience and I think you actually save money and time.

Gavin Halliday:

I'll guarantee you save money and if the MI was sufficiently sophisticated to say, Martin's been in the contact centre teams three times trying to get this result in the normal way and then did a cold handoff and then you don't phone back when you expect them to and then Martin phones another three times. If your MI was good enough to say, Martin's phoned seven times, if you work out the average handling time, seven against a single call where there's a warm or hot handle, however you describe it, then you'll find that actually you're saving time.

Martin Dodd:

And then, if I was just summarising that because I really liked how you worded this because I hear people getting into debates around, "Ah, we need to have a model, the call centre does this and that specialist team do that." Actually, what I heard you say was, it doesn't necessarily matter what your model is as long as you're empowered at the front end to do the relatively simple stuff the right way, access to systems, financial empowerment. And then, however you structure yourself, whether it's within the call centre, dedicated complaints team, one complaints team, in a funny kind of way, that will be dependent on type of business you are, how you structure yourself, as long as the person who answers the call knows where to go based on what the customer said, the right person's answering the call, they have the conversation, the call gets passed through, it kind of doesn't matter. Is that fair? Is that what it is?

Gavin Halliday:

Yeah, and to build on that is depending on your industry there may be different regulatory burdens.

Martin Dodd:

Yeah, good point.

Gavin Halliday:

Therefore, occasionally, in banking, even if you dissolve a first point of contact, there's a specific resolution letter or acknowledgement by email you've got to make and therefore, colleagues need to know that and therefore, there is a minimum standard that everybody's going to get to, but if they're capable of stopping standing orders and opening accounts and changing addresses, it's just another process that they've got in the flow chart, that you've got to be able to access at the point to say that was a complainant, there's a process I've got to complete, but by in large, if they can complete it at first point of contact, the FCA, God bless them, have actually made that a relatively simple process and the letter is relatively templated and therefore, you don't have to go into green screens of, you said this and I said this and I’ve done an investigation, that we have a proper formatted file response letter, may do if it gets followed in the process, both in complexity or type.

Martin Dodd:

Just one final point, the danger is, me and you will talk about this for hours and we want to keep it relatively brief. The other model that people challenge me on when I talk about empowering the frontline is, ah, it's too difficult to do because you can't maintain quality. It's much easier if you funnel everything into a complaints team and everything's handed off and then it's picked up by the complaints team, then you can control quality and you make sure your outcome testing is good.

Gavin Halliday:

Yeah.

Martin Dodd:

I've had that as a challenge. What's your thoughts on that?

Gavin Halliday:

Well, for complex complaints, I probably buy that and that's why you need to identify them early on.

Martin Dodd:

Yeah.

Gavin Halliday:

For simple complaints, by in large, these are things that the contact centre agents will be doing as part of their day job as queries. I'm going to set up a standing order, I'm going to change an address, and therefore, you've got to decide, which is in which camp and that's to do the runners and repeaters and realities, things that the contact centre agent would naturally do as part of their day job, then I don't buy that argument. Actually, why would you not just say, "Well, just go on and fix it and make sure you tick the box that says complete," and if systemically, you can get the complaint processes to run in the background, then that helps because often, I hear the problem is, "But that means I've got to fire up the complaint handling system and I've got to retype a whole bunch of stuff and audit format the letter." So if it can be cured systemically that you just, say, push a radio button to produce a letter that says, "I've resolved your complaints because it's picked up that it’s Martin Dodd," then you can go and do that.

But it's all about that triage that says, if it's left of this line, you should be capable of doing it and you should do it. And the standard Q&A processes of the contact centre doing their day jobs should be no different from them answering the complaint about those processes because it should be equally accurate in both gaps. However, if it's a complicated thing, then, I do have sympathy that if a frontline complaint handler may not see that, he may only see it every two or three months, I have sympathy that they’re not going to remember and they've then got to start digging bits or paper out to say, "How do I deal with this?" Or what have you, and of course, and the process needs to be selected and then hand that off to somebody.

Martin Dodd:

And they're the rarities.

Gavin Halliday:

They're the rarities.

Martin Dodd:

So you just need a way of dealing with those.

Gavin Halliday:

Yes, exactly. And 70% of all complaints are, could you just fix something that hasn't happened and that the contact centre can do. So the rarities are actually not, they are rare, that's the interesting work, they’re rare. They don't happen frequently, but they do probably require quite a bit of specialism.

Martin Dodd:

Okay. So let me try and do a summary of what we've talked about. Let's see if I get this right and you can challenge me back as we always do. I'm hearing, why is it so important to get to the right person straight away that’s because customers' expectations, customers' time, how they're feeling when they come in, it's almost incumbent on an organisation to organise themselves around the customer. I'm then hearing, first person who takes the call, kind of doesn't matter what your model is, as long as they've got good listening skills, they're empowered financially and access to systems so they can do the right things for the customer and don't be scared about the financial limits because actually, they won't abuse them and they will want to do the right thing for the customer. And actually, I think there's a lot of side benefits about engagement, development, things like that as you kind of walked through.

You've got to be aware that there will be rarities, there will be certain specialist complaints that are coming in, and then, that's all about the experience of the transfer and whatever we want to call it, hot handoff, warm transfer it's about getting to the right person and have, then, very slick processes that enable you to get that call to the right person straight away and that it's almost a seamless handover, it feels good as you get transferred and then they pick it up and they run with it and they own it. And actually, how those teams are organised kind of doesn't matter, that's up to the organisation, as long as the person on the frontline can get to that person straight away. And then, they kind of just own it and see through it. Is that a fair summary on what we've been talking about?

Gavin Halliday:

Spot on Martin. I wouldn't correct anything you've said. The only build I would put on that is keeping it up to date because people change, processes change, etc etc. So this is not a one and done thing. You've got to keep revisiting it to make sure that everybody understands what the process is and you know yourself. If you tune out something in an operation, you've got to get back to it six months later because people drift away. It's not intentional, but they get into bad habits. They then tell somebody else about the bad habit and it all just gets a bit fuzzy around the edges. So you've got to relatively frequently, I think, a minimum of maybe six months, just remind everyone, "This is the shape of the operation that we built and can we please comply with that?" And as things change, you need a good mechanism to make sure that disseminates across all the teams and all the people so that they stay up-to-date.

Martin Dodd:

That's a fantastic thing to finish on, Gavin, because I'd forgotten about that, that I see a lot of firms do this. They almost draw a line in the sand, get everything set back up again, and it works great after a month or two and everyone's got into it. And then, you revisit it 18 months later and everyone's questioning why it's not working as well as it used to. And you're right, things have changed, things that moved on so it's that continual feedback loop and checking in that everything is still working as it should have been. Really, really great build. Really great build.

Martin Dodd:

Gavin, just a personal thank you from me. That was superb. Great catching back up with you and hearing your experience and dangerous how aligned we were on that. Hopefully, people will find that beneficial and thanks again for your time today.

Gavin Halliday:

You’re very welcome. Thank you, Martin.

Martin Dodd:

If you found this podcast insightful and would like to listen to and read more on the Complaints Outlook 2021 themes, keep an eye out on our social, subscribe to our podcast channel on your favorite streaming platform, or just head over to huntswood.com/insights and you can sign up to our mailing list and we'll make sure we keep you up-to-date with relevant articles, blogs, videos and more podcasts.