The Complaint Process in the Banking Industry

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to explore the process that is followed by South American retail banking customers when complaining, and to identify the dimensions that are important to them when evaluating service recovery efforts. A qualitative study was undertaken, which consisted of 25 in-depth interviews with Chilean retail banking customers who experienced either excellent or very poor complaint handling management. Results show several important dimensions for customers, such as time for acknowledging the complaint, time spent by the customer looking for a solution to the complaint and time taken by the bank to solve complaints, among others.