The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
But customer voices are a business’ most valuable asset and need to be taken seriously — whether they are categorized as complaints or inquiries. When people turn to the CFPB with a complaint or an inquiry, they have an issue that hasn’t yet been resolved. With approximately 1 million complaints accepted over the course of seven years, the CFPB’s volume of complaints is not small. The banking industry should pay attention to each complaint, regardless of how many complaints there are in total.
Any customer complaint can be unpacked for value, and each customer’s voice must be listened to. After all, one customer’s complaint can be tomorrow’s headline. Each voice is a valid source of data that can be rich with insights. Each voice can shed light on new information for a company.
While it is true that the CFPB does not provide contextual metrics, the agency does share data about the volume of complaints, the trend of complaints over time and the categorization of complaints by product, subproduct, issue and subissue — all of which are meaningful data points that can reveal important indicators of customer dissatisfaction. The debt collection industry, for example, has the opportunity to hear from their customers and use learnings from the CFPB data to spot — and then address — trending industrywide issues.
Of course, the CFPB’s database, like most data sources, is messy. Cleaning and structuring the data are vital first steps to analyzing it. Only then can financial institutions hear what their customers are saying, extract insights and transform those insights into predictive indicators, expansive strategies and drivers for better performance. In order to unlock its value, it is also essential to define the contextual framework for the application of the complaints data and to build statistical rigor and predictive tools through its use.
If fact, studying the CFPB database showed my team that signs of the Equifax data breach were evident at least six months before the media covered it. Once the media did cover the breach, consumers began adopting the media’s language and using it in their interactions with financial institutions. Many consumers also submitted duplicate complaints, which offers insights into the severity of issues and mistrust in our financial institutions.
We have found that CFPB complaints data can prove valuable when financial institutions want to compare their top issues against those of their competitors. This can help them identify issues with greater granularity and become more diligent and accurate in responding to new challenges.
When treated as strategic assets, complaints — regardless of how they are categorized and regardless of their volume — can become a critical part of a financial institution’s success. Exploring complaint data, like the data in the CFPB database, can help institutions identify issues before they lead to the next big story or regulatory risks, predict and prevent future problems and, ultimately, uncover new business opportunities for growth.
