When a customer takes the time and effort to complain, it matters.
In fact, for every customer who does complain, there are 26 who do not. 

Each year in the United States alone, approximately 6 billion high-risk customer conversations take place between institutions and their customers. These conversations are a rich data source ready to be unpacked and integrated with other data sources. Customer complaints are the intelligence companies need to continuously improve. And this past year using PositivityTech®, we showcased customer complaints’ immense power and received much attention for our work — the best of which is featured below. 

We thank you for being part of our journey.

1. Winning Citi Distinguished Alumni Award for Sustainability, Environmental, Social and Governance

ESG is not just a buzzword — it is a call-to-action. Companies that want to prioritize the S in ESG must commit to elevating their customers’ voices, understanding their friction points, and then repairing problematic policies and practices. 

This is key to strengthening customers’ relationships with their businesses. As the Citi Distinguished Alumni Award for Sustainability, Environmental, Social and Governance certificate shared: “For her invaluable work enabling businesses to prioritize the ‘S’ in ESG — further strengthening the relationships financial companies have with their customers and using their voices to provide better services.”

2. Publishing our findings about customers’ fast-growing issues — and showing how institutions can use data to push back

Companies do not have the luxury to sit back and wait for issues to reveal themselves. In this year’s FrameWork articles, we explored timely product and regulatory issues, and shared our authoritative perspective on how institutions can proactively monitor their customer complaints and take action. 

3. Publishing news commentary and thought leadership in the media

With banks facing regulatory fines regularly, media outlets covered PositivityTech findings about the issues that customer complaint data reveals, as well as thought leadership focused on preventing discrimination and prioritizing ESG with customer complaint data. See all of our media coverage here.

American Banker: What card issuers can learn from CFPB’s buy now/pay later inquiry
When the CFPB began looking into Buy Now Pay Later practices, PositivityTech found that while complaints were still small, they were steadily increasing. These findings foreshadowed the many issues that BNPL companies would face only months later.

Global Banking & Finance Review: Customer input is key to ending banks’ discrimination
Two to five percent of complaints to the CFPB suggest perceived discrimination, according to PositivityTech — giving banks the opportunity to act. 

American Banker: Truist reckons with customer backlash after integration snags
Following Truist’s technology integrations, customers voiced their complaints in a variety of ways. Using customer complaint data, PositivityTech revealed how robust the issue really was.

BAI: How banks can prioritize the “S” in ESG
Social impact starts with listening to customers’ voices and using their narrative data to develop products, policies, and practices that solve their challenges. Using PositivityTech, banks are turning customer complaints into critical data sources to do just that.

American Banker: How badly was Bread burned by its online credit card payment glitch?
After Bread Financial’s recent outage, American Banker looked to findings from the PositivityTech platform to see how customers were impacted. The findings shed light on Bread’s customer complaints during this critical time — and identified ongoing issues worth noting.

American Banker: A showdown is coming over who is liable for P2P payments fraud
With the CFPB’s focus on banks’ liabilities concerning digital payment fraud, American Banker turned to PositivityTech for customer complaint-related insights. Using PositivityTech, we shared data about the jump in customer complaints to the CFPB about Early Warning Services.

4. Serving as a Banking Tech Awards judge

When I launched the Decision Management function at Citi, “decision management” was not yet a known term. When I first began speaking about high-risk customer conversations, it was not a known term either. Being ahead of the industry means being on the forefront of innovation. In 2022, I had the opportunity to apply that expertise as a judge for FinTech Futures’ Banking Tech Awards USA, and to explore, up close, other fintech and banking innovations with demonstrated business impact. I look forward to once again serving as a Banking Tech Awards judge in 2023!

5. Speaking to audiences about the importance of subject matter expertise on the entrepreneurship journey

Founded by banking and data analytics leaders, PositivityTech exists to solve a major, growing pain point across industries — creating business value from customer complaint data. Our experiences inspired our passion for customer listening and informed our approach toward the use of customer narratives. This work led us to build the technology that does exactly that, which I shared on both the Lattes with Leaders podcast, the Innovis/Consumer Bankers Association webinar, and, in 2023, will discuss on The Brand Called You podcast. Today, thanks to PositivityTech, we have analytic tools to identify, understand, predict, and prevent these friction points from recurring. 

Transformation happens slowly, and begins when we change our mindsets and approach. Institutions that embrace the idea that “negative input can have a positive impact” value customers who take the time to complain and are dedicated to putting their customers first.

In 2023, let’s commit to reframing customer complaints as strategic and predictive insights in order to improve our customers’ lives and our brands.