www.publicinvolvement.org.uk

The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) Annual Review is here .

The Ombudsman in a new post-industrial age

Now that what Walter Merricks refers to as "the huge volumes of mortgage endowment complaints which we have had to cope with over the past five years have forced us to concentrate on systems and processes" are reducing, Walter is looking forward to doing business in a way that allows "us to connect more personally with the businesses and consumers who constitute our 'customers'."

As readers of our blog and articles will know, we are very interested in this idea of making a personal connection with users and customers. A successful complaint handler always works to make that initial connection which then makes the job of reconciliation and resolution so much easier.

[By the way, those of you who wonder where this new vocabulary of 'connection' has sprung from, our answer is from the ideas of Marshall Rosenberg and his language of conflict resolution which he calls nonviolent communication®. For more details on this fascinating and practical approach go to the link www.nvc-uk.info]

Extract from the FOS Annual Review

It will be a challenge for an escalated complaints handling service with a very high work load - 80,000 more companies from April 2007 as a result of the new credit legislation - and what can be very long times to resolution. Michael Barnes is the independent assessor of the FOS who looks at complaints about complaints about complaints about complaints (i.e. he is the final point of appeal for people who have complained to the company, subsequently had that complaint case considered by the Ombudsman and have subsequently complained to the Service's in-house complaint handlers about the way their case was handled and been dissatisfied with that so come to the independent assessor - did I get this right?). He draws attention to cases where complainants had to deal with 3, 4 or in one case 5 complaint adjudicators in cases taking 3 or more years.

So if personal connection is what is needed, that is one hurdle to overcome with a target of the complainant dealing over time with one or at most two members of a complaint team and since (unlike the lonely hearts columns) no LTR (long term relationship) is being sought on either side, the case should not take 3 years to sort out. GSoH definitely would be a help too, I imagine.

The Service's research info is always worth a look and given the influx of new companies, it will be interesting to track the views of the financial services companies themselves and see whether they are developing a more positive view of the service. Here perceptions of consistency are always tilted to the negative with only 36% agreeing that the decisions are consistent compared to the much higher numbers that agree that the FOS is a a good dispute resolution system (62%) and the 58% who agree that the service is fair and unbiased.

Thinking of the future and how the scheme will evolve, warning bells should be sounding in the board rooms of the 40 companies with 500+ complaints per year and the 22 with between 251 and 500. The consumer organisations and others are now calling for the persistent offenders to be named.

There is nothing with a higher personal impact that being named in the media - especially in this case, in the Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday read by 21% of those who complain to the Ombudsman.

M-A-C offers advice, training and research for those who handle complaints both at the front line and in escalated complaint management departments. We understand what complainant satisfaction data means in this context and can relate the user experience with that of other stakeholders such as the companies or organisations complained against to reputation and repurchase behaviour. Speak to Colin Adamson about this if you would like to hear more.