Complaint Documentation

Documenting complaints appropriately and getting to the root cause is an important part of your Compliance Management System. We recommend documenting the following, at a minimum:

1. Name of the person submitting the complaint (could be a customer or non-customer)
2. Date received
3. Employee that received the complaint
4. How the complaint was received (in person, online, etc.)
5. Description of the complaint
6. Person responsible for investigation and resolution
7. How any issue(s) were resolved (refund issued, product change, training, software change, etc.)
8. Description of who was impacted, as applicable (customers, non-customers, employees, etc.)
9. Date of resolution
10. Root cause analysis

Determining the root cause requires you to dig deeper to find what’s really behind the complaint. Some of the benefits include the ability to efficiently:

1. Reduce the same or similar errors from happening repeatedly;
2. Improve policies, procedures and processes;
3. Uncover specific training needs;
4. Identify specific weaknesses;
5. Identify areas of potential regulatory concerns; and,
6. Uncover potential UDAAP and Fair Lending issues

Complaint management is just one of several pillars that are essential to your Compliance Management System (CMS).  If you want to learn more, be sure to check out our webinar “Complaints, Complaint Programs & Compliance” or, even better, our six-part webinar series on “Compliance Management” which walks you through each of the key components of an effective CMS.

Published
2025/07/07