The team at Worksmart are delighted to announce that we have won in four categories at the 2020 ACQ5 Global Awards.

In the sixth of our series of guest blogs on key issues for complaints handling, Sarah Lawrence (Access preceding blog here...), former Technical Manager at Financial Ombudsman Service looks at how firms can work to avoid referrals to her former employer

Although we're well into 2020 and Covid-19 has ensured the world is a very different place to when the plan from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) was published earlier in the year, (read the full report), the report makes for interesting reading despite the current priority of maintaining service levels through the disruption caused by the pandemic, (read the FCA's recent guidance).

Flexibility is key

Life is very different now from what it was just a few weeks ago. Businesses and their staff are facing great uncertainty, however one thing that is certain, is that as customers come to terms with the new normal, there will be rising levels of concern with regards to the provision of products and services from financial services providers.  This will give rise to a range of different questions and potential complaints. The UK are facing this challenge at a time of heightened emotions on all sides, where everyone is potentially vulnerable, not just customers, but also your staff and your business.

In the fifth of our series of guest blogs on key issues for complaints handling, Sarah Lawrence (access the preceding blog here...), former Technical Manager at Financial Ombudsman Service looks at the importance of consistency in complaints handling

The DISP rules don’t say it in so many words, but its rules cover the need to spot and resolve habitual issues before they become complaints, as well as rules about learning lessons from past experience. This all points to one thing - consistency.

In the fourth of our series of guest blogs on key issues for complaints handling, Sarah Lawrence (access the preceding blog here...), former Technical Manager at Financial Ombudsman Service asks if companies are really catching all complaints and submitting them to Root Cause Analysis

It’s become something of a mantra wherever we go, businesses saying a lot about learning from complaints. We know it’s an expectation handed down from the regulator and the Ombudsman Service, and it gets trotted out, so that we can all say we’ve done our bit. Unfortunately, however, the reality is somewhat different, and it reflects in the bitty, piecemeal nature of dealing with complaints from the very start to the potential end after the Ombudsman has made the final decision.

In the third of our series of guest blogs on key issues for complaints handling

(access the previous blogs here...),  Sarah Lawrence, former Technical Manager at Financial Ombudsman Service discusses the key elements of a great complaints handler

Maybe we’re biased, but we think it takes a rather special set of skills to be a good complaints handler. But, there’s also another list of skills to move from being a good complaints handler into being a great complaints handler.

In the second of our series of guest blogs on key issues for complaints handling (access the preceding blog here...), Sarah Lawrence, former Technical Manager at Financial Ombudsman Service explains why quick answers aren't always the best approach to complaints handling.

In a world of increasing technology and self-service, we still find that a significant number of people still feel the need to connect with another human being when things have gone wrong.  But, in a world that needs ever faster resolutions, it can seem puzzling to see that overall customer satisfaction has fallen over the past two years, according to the Institute of Customer Service.  Surely with increasing speed and technology, comes better customer experience?

In the first of our series of guest blogs on key issues for complaints handling, Sarah Lawrence, former Technical Manager at Financial Ombudsman Service takes a look at what we can anticipate from the Regulator in 2020

You may remember that way back in 2019 the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published its Business Plan and we commented on the small paragraph on page 15, that seemed to give a huge signpost to the way the FCA would be pushing its regulatory agenda in the future.  You can find the whole report here , but just to refresh your memories it said: