Aptean Respond Whitepaper: Driving Compliance & Performance through Effective Complaints Handling

Driving Compliance and Performance through Effective Complaints Handling

Gambling industry: why complaints management is key to long term success

Why Complaints Management is Key to Long Term Success

The UK Government’s white paper ‘High stakes: gambling reform for the digital age’ proposes a raft of new measures for the gambling industry, representing the biggest shake-up of the sector in almost 20 years. Whilst we obviously don’t know exactly what shape these new regulations will eventually take, one thing we do know is that a core focus is on player protection, placing the onus on gambling firms to tackle and minimise harm to customers.

As evidenced by other industries in the UK, regulators have prioritised protecting vulnerable customers, and this is likely to be the same for the gambling industry. The UK Health Security Agency has stated that close to 5 million people in England have a gambling addiction, are problem gamblers, or are at risk of developing an addiction, so it’s not hard to see why consumer protection is high on the priority list.

Why is Effective Complaints Handling so Important?

With fines from the Gambling Commission reaching their highest ever levels at the end of 2021, the majority of gambling businesses are already working hard to tow the line, acting responsibly and within the terms of their licences. When it comes to complaints, the Gambling Commission requires businesses to have effective handling processes and procedures in place, resolving issues in a timely manner and providing an audit trail of just how this has been achieved. Without a transparent complaints process, businesses not only run the risk of falling foul of the Gambling Commission but become prime targets for claims management companies too.

With more focus than ever on the fair treatment of vulnerable customers, complaints management has a key role to play in helping to identify vulnerable customers and putting the support in place throughout a complaint journey to ensure they’re treated equitably and that the right outcomes are achieved.

But with complaint numbers and complaint complexity on the up, in combination with the uncertainty surrounding changing regulations, gambling organisations are struggling to achieve continuous improvements in their complaints handling.

How are the Gambling Companies Capturing and Recording Complaints Today?

Spreadsheets, in-house applications or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions are unable to capture the breadth and depth of information needed to not only resolve complaints but to derive maximum value from complaint data and deliver customer experience excellence too. At the same time, those solutions are often not transparent enough, unable to provide the clear audit trail that’s so vital when it comes to demonstrating how outcomes have been achieved.

What’s needed is a process that supports the complaint handler in securing good customer outcomes, while providing the level of detail and analysis to inform business change and delivering the transparency and auditability to demonstrate best practice and regulatory compliance.

The gambling sector has a unique opportunity to change the management of complaints by implementing a dedicated complaints management system in anticipation of regulatory changes.

Benefits of Complaints Management Systems

1. Fast, Efficient Complaints Handling

A centralised complaints management solution boosts the effectiveness of complaints handling. The right solution helps manage the entire complaints process through each step of the complaint lifecycle, providing a single, comprehensive version of the truth, with the addition of intelligent workflows helping to guide complaint handlers through even the most complex of complaints. The results can be transformative, significantly increasing the quality, consistency and efficiency of interactions with customers, helping to achieve better outcomes, faster.

Data Integrity

By integrating with other business systems, the right complaints management solution upholds data consistency and information sharing across the business, delivering a comprehensive view of the customer. This gives frontline staff a single view of the case, ensuring all complaint details are correctly captured in a single location, enabling greater responsiveness and the ability to immediately acknowledge the customer. Predefined processes ensure the right information is captured in the right format, in line with business and regulatory requirements, before the complaint is resolved at the frontline or escalated if necessary.

Automation and Intelligent Workflows

Whilst complaints volumes and complexity may be rising, that’s not to say that complaints handling resource is rising accordingly. Technology can help by automating time-consuming and error-prone tasks, freeing-up complaint handlers to focus on the more value-add activities. Intelligent workflows can help to speed-up resolutions, increasing efficiencies throughout the end-to-end complaint journey. Such technology can guide complaint handlers to the next course of action pertinent to that specific customer and complaint, helping to prevent any unnecessary delays.

This capability also helps to avoid unnecessary escalations, furnishing frontline complaint handlers with the confidence and skills to independently manage customer complaints without having to escalate them to the next level, alleviating the pressure on the entire complaint function.

Quality Assurance

For effective complaints management, in-built quality assurance (QA) processes are vital. Putting the necessary checks and balances in place not only helps to boost customer satisfaction, but identifies staff training and development needs too. The right complaints management system provides an accurate, real-time view of staff performance, enabling supervisors to pinpoint where teams and individuals can improve. This helps flag errors and allows the business to judge whether employees have the right tools to access the information they need in the most intuitive format at the right time.

Such QA capabilities are crucial in on-boarding new starters too. For new employees, 100% of their work might be reviewed within a QA framework but as their work improves and the quality increases, the flexible QA process begins to step away, becoming less intrusive as employee ability and confidence in employees increases.

2. Transparency and Auditability

Complaints management solutions provide a broad range of tools for extracting the right information, in an accessible and user-friendly format. Interactive, customisable dashboards provide at-a-glance visibility into the management information (MI) that matters the most — from case pipelines and outstanding tasks, to performance metrics, root cause trends and more.

Real-time reporting delivers critical data and insights to measure performance and inform decision making, performance monitoring, complaint tracking or evaluating outcomes.

As we’ve seen with the financial services industry, regulatory bodies require businesses to continuously monitor and review their delivery of good consumer outcomes. As such, accurate record keeping is a must, with businesses responsible for providing evidence that they are meeting their obligations with regards to customers, delivering the behaviours, standards and outcomes expected. As we wait to see just how far regulatory requirements for the UK gambling industry will ultimately go, this ability to automatically provide a precise and detailed audit trail of how outcomes are reached will position gambling businesses ahead of the game, not only in terms of compliance but in delivering a thorough understanding of the end-to-end complaint journey.

3. Deep Analysis to Provide Good Outcomes

There’s a real need to delve deeper than ever into the cause of complaints, with robust root cause analysis (RCA) helping to uncover and identify the systemic issues that can plague so many gambling businesses. Understanding the reasons behind each and every complaint allows a business to fix any problems and prevent such issues arising again, thus reducing the potential for additional customer complaints. Complaints management solutions capture recurring themes and instances, with specific codes for certain issues, quickly identifying wider issues and problems.

To this end, facilitating effective RCA is a must-have capability for a complaints management solution, helping to not only identify the often-systemic issues that cause customer complaints, but to take the necessary steps to eradicate these problems. What’s needed is the ability to investigate and pinpoint fundamental issues that lie at the heart of many complaints. This approach enables the complaint function to take its rightful place as a real driver and informer of continuous organisational improvements, deriving optimum value from the complaints data available.

4. Safeguard Vulnerable Customers

One of the key drivers behind the Government review of the UK gambling industry was how to prevent harm to customers. When it comes to customer vulnerability, complaints are an often overlooked or untapped area. In reality, complaints can be a key indicator of previously hidden vulnerabilities, as well as representing a crucial customer touchpoint where gambling businesses can seek to minimise harm to customers.

Typically, complaint teams are well versed in supporting vulnerable customers, but a complaints management solution enhances their skills with intuitive software and intelligent workflows. Using advanced vulnerability detection technology, customer support teams are empowered to quickly identify and provide tailored support for vulnerable customers.

5. Compliance Achieved

Whilst we can all read the UK Government’s white paper, we still don’t know exactly what new regulations are to come for the UK gambling industry. Based on what we see happening in other industries, we know that transparent, efficient complaint handling with customer care at its very heart has a key role to play.

In light of this, complaints management solutions are fundamental to delivering accurate insights to ensure compliance with local and global regulations, however stringent they might be. The right solution can produce comprehensive regulatory reports, tailored to meet exacting requirements, and providing that all-important audit trail of how complaints are handled, pinpointing every stage of the end-to-end customer journey and documenting exactly how particular outcomes are achieved.

Transform Your Complaints Management

With an effective end-to-end complaints management system in place, it is possible to not only increase customer satisfaction and safety, especially for the most vulnerable in society, but also to capture valuable insights. Complaints provide a wealth of information that can be used to inform meaningful changes to products and services, resulting in a more informed and successful business.

Why Aptean Respond?

Having worked with complaints teams across multiple industries for over 30 years, Aptean understands the challenges posed by rising complaint levels and increasing complaint complexity, combined with ever-tighter regulation. Aptean Respond helps to develop long term customer relationships, manage complaints to drive critical business improvements and ensure compliance with stringent regulatory requirements.

About Aptean

Aptean is one of the world’s leading providers of purpose-built, industry-specific software that helps manufacturers and distributors effectively run and grow their businesses. With both cloud and on-premise deployment options, Aptean’s products, services and unmatched expertise help businesses of all sizes to be Ready for What’s Next, Now®. Aptean is headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia and has offices in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

To learn more about Aptean and the markets we serve, visit www.aptean.com

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