Wishing you a year that’s better than the last, filled with health, happiness, and deep listening — to ourselves and to those around us.

This year, we have all experienced many challenges. As we continue to witness life’s fragility, we are focused on helping companies gain resilience by listening to their customers’ voices. We are proud that our innovations have garnered much attention, and we thank you for being part of our journey.

1. Bias Index™: Identifying Discrimination In Our Institutions

Our purpose has always been to ensure that customers’ voices are heard and that companies use their customers’ voices to create important changes. Long before this year, we aimed to predict and prevent bias using customer and employee narratives.

In May, we launched the PositivityTech® Bias Index™, an AI predictive model that identifies prejudice within customer and employee complaints and makes it possible for financial institutions to repair products or unjust practices. A few weeks later, the world watched in horror as George Floyd was killed. As protests began, individuals shared their stories of discrimination. Companies pledged to weed out systemic discrimination, and the Bias Index found itself in the spotlight:

2. Understanding The Growing Impact Of COVID-19 On Banks And Customers

Three months into the pandemic, institutions wanted to understand what was most distressing to their customers and mitigate these issues. With more individuals publicizing their complaints than ever before, it was clear that customers were becoming frustrated.

By exploring COVID-19-related complaints using the PositivityTech platform, we found that though customers have continued to turn to their banks for support in times of crisis, their takeaways have been disappointing, which we shared in our July FrameWork. For example, customers have complained that their credit reports are adversely affected even when a financial institution agrees to a delayed payment.

The PositivityTech platform also identified that customers were incorporating language highlighted in the media in their complaints. For example, one customer used George Floyd’s powerful language to share the biases that he faced at his bank, and the current crises’ interconnected impacts on him and his family.

Do you know if your customers are expressing similar complaints? How would you respond?

3. Answering The Need For Better Complaint Categorization

As the world began to adapt to a new normal, we turned our attention to a pain point that executives shared with us both before and during COVID: the need for better customer complaint categorization, which enables them to address root causes. We released PositivityTech’s Categorization solution to bridge the gap between the issues that customers select and what they actually say.

4. Announcing The Inside PositivityTech Benchmark Reports

With the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine underway, companies are now focused on their reset, which will be rooted in data and analytics. Just last month, we launched The Inside PositivityTech Benchmark Reports, which measure banks’ complaint share relative to other banks. By ingesting customer narratives and extracting critical intelligence, the benchmark report reveals where you’re leading and where you might be losing your edge. The benchmark shares data about your shifting space, including:

  • Comparisons across products and companies,
  • The severity of banks’ complaints,
  • Leading indicators of environmental risks,
  • Potential for bias,
  • The impact of COVID,
  • And important changes over time.

5. Purpose-Driven Leadership

As 2020 ends and 2021 begins, we have reason to be cautiously optimistic. Companies are making changes to combat discrimination, listen to their customers’ voices, and elevate the voices of diverse, purpose-driven leaders. Throughout these uncertain times, we have been proud to share our expertise and knowledge with global institutions, media outlets, and women mentees in the data analytics and financial sectors.

I wish you and your families a happy, healthy, and safe holiday season. In 2021, my hope is that we all turn negatives into positives.

“The world is full of what seem like intractable problems. Often we let that paralyze us. Instead, let it spur you to action.” — Melinda Gates