Close the GAP: The Importance of Governance, Accountability and Performance Monitoring in Complaints Management

Complaints are a direct measure of your organisation’s credibility, empathy and operational strength. Mishandling them can result in damage to your brand, unhappy customers and regulatory scrutiny, particularly for those in the financial services, insurance and local government sectors. But handle complaints well and you’ll earn trust, foster loyalty and set your business apart. 

Research by Khoros found that 83% of consumers feel more loyal to brands that answer and resolve their complaints, and with the Financial Ombudsman Service reporting a 49% surge in escalated complaints in the second half of 2024, there are plenty of opportunities for businesses to get complaint handling right, or wrong. 

When customer complaints aren’t resolved to their satisfaction, they escalate—and the cost to your business multiplies.  

To combat this, there are three key areas that your financial services or insurance organisation must prioritise—governance, accountability and monitoring performance. Below, we’ll show how businesses like yours are addressing these areas, sharing insights from our recent webinar and highlighting how technology and data can turn complaints from a risk into a strategic asset.

Governance: Staying Ahead of the Regulatory Curve

From updates to Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) rules to the ongoing demands of Consumer Duty, the regulations for financial services and insurance businesses never stand still. Staying compliant isn’t just about avoiding penalties; it’s about proving to your customers, teams and stakeholders that your organisation is reliable and responsible. 

To ensure that you meet your governance requirements, you need clear roles and responsibilities, set standards around data quality, and defined policies, procedures and controls in place. You also need to monitor how well these processes are being followed by all staff. 

How you handle data is key in ensuring governance across your organisation. By removing manual processes and ensuring all data is digitised, standardised and has an audit trail, you can reduce common mistakes around data input. 

The balancing act of data access is also important to get right. There is the need for complaints teams to have complete, easy to access and up-to-date information at their fingertips to deliver fast and consistent resolutions. Especially as 70% of customers expect anyone they interact with to have the full context of their situation. However, putting restrictions in place regarding data is necessary to ensure that staff only see what they need to. 

The best way to make sure all complaints are handled appropriately and compliantly is to build structured processes that automatically guide complaints handlers through the procedures they need to follow, including escalation and sign off. 

With real-time metrics and dashboards you have instant access to complaint trends, compliance indicators and information around how well your processes are working—helping you catch issues early and act fast. When it comes to checking that you are meeting your governance requirements, regulators are watching for evidence that you’re actively managing risks and delivering fair outcomes and excellent service for all customers.

Accountability: Empowering Teams and Inspiring Trust

Accountability gives your complaints teams the confidence to act decisively and deliver for your customers. Yet for many organisations, it remains a sticking point with 44% of our webinar poll respondents highlighting it as their biggest challenge in the complaints process. When responsibility isn’t clearly owned at the frontline, accountability falters, leading to confusion and frustration for both staff and customers. 

Frontline ownership is an issue for many complaints teams with a third of poll respondents saying this is where accountability breaks down for them. Handoffs between teams and inconsistent documentation are also areas where organisations see issues around accountability. All of this can erode trust, create confusion and make it harder to demonstrate fair outcomes, especially for vulnerable customers. By clarifying roles, strengthening processes and ensuring transparent records, organisations can make accountability a real driver of confidence and customer trust. 

Detecting and supporting vulnerable customers is vital as they require empathy, flexibility and a clear path to fair outcomes. Effective complaints management means identifying vulnerability early and handling these cases with care, ensuring no one slips through the cracks. When you combine this with strong process ownership, regular training and transparent audit trails, accountability stops being a buzzword and starts being a habit. 

When asked what would improve accountability within their organisation, 67% of poll respondents called for a blend of clearer process ownership, real-time performance visibility and automated reminders or escalations. There is no single fix to improve accountability but when everyone knows their role and the system backs them up—then accountability can thrive.

Performance: Turning Complaints Data Into Action

Good performance in financial services and insurance complaints management isabout delivering the right outcome for every case. To understand how effective your complaints handling is, you need to measure key areas such as response times, customer sentiment, escalations and many other areas.  

In our poll, 62% of respondents said they monitor a balanced mix of quantitative key performance indicators (KPIs) and qualitative feedback, while 15% focus only on the numbers. Worryingly, 23% don’t have a structured approach at all, leaving room for missed opportunities and trend data. 

Manual processes can drastically hinder the performance of your complaints team, with 46% of poll respondents saying that slow, manual work is their biggest challenge. Smart suggestions for case responses, automated case lookouts and predictive analytics help complaints handlers to keep performance top of mind. With the right technology in place, your team can focus on what matters most—resolving complaints with skill and empathy. 

Performance dashboards and monitoring tools allow everyone to be responsible for their performance by spotting bottlenecks and learning from data-driven insights to create a culture of continuous improvement. This results in fewer errors, faster resolutions and happier customers.

Building Better Complaints Management Through Governance and Accountability 

Strong governance, clear accountability and outstanding performance monitoring—these are the foundations of trust in complaints management. The results from our polls were clear, organisations want streamlined compliance processes, smarter use of data and fewer manual headaches. 

As customer expectations continue to rise, having the right systems in place means you can turn every complaint into a catalyst for improvement, a source of business intelligence and an opportunity to build loyalty. 

Aptean Respond is our purpose-built complaints management system designed for highly regulated sectors like financial services and insurance. With decades of industry expertise, we understand your unique challenges—whether that’s keeping pace with regulatory changes, managing complex case workflows or detecting and supporting vulnerable customers. 

Our complaints management software brings together all aspects of complaints handling, enabling you to manage cases from first contact to resolution with speed and consistency. Real-time dashboards and customisable reporting provide instant visibility of team and individual performance, while powerful analytics help to identify root causes and spot emerging risks before they escalate.  

With features like consumer vulnerability detection, automated alerts and audit-ready documentation, Aptean Respond empowers your team to deliver fair outcomes, streamline processes and turn every complaint into a real opportunity for business growth. 

Let’s turn complaints into opportunities—see how Aptean Respond can help your business to start building a smarter, more efficient complaints process.