20 Best Complaint Management System with AI in 2023

Table of Contents

What Is Complaint Management Software?

This is a buyer-centric market. There are several market players with almost similar products and the same pricing models in any product or service genre. Thus, the cost of brand switching is very low. It becomes imperative for any business to hold on to its loyal customer base since the cost of gaining a new customer is more than five times the cost of retaining the old customers. In this scenario, complaint management software becomes a vital cog in the company's wheel.

The complaint management software is a group of tools that allows businesses to accept, categorize, and track all types of grievances from various channels like social media sites, direct mail complaints, website testimonials, complaint calls, and more.

How Compliance Management System Helps to Manage Customer Issues

The best complaint management system handles these issues from initiation to closure or resolution. It also prioritizes the complaints, notifies customers, and assigns company assets for solving the problems.

• The top-notch complaint software also records complaints and resolution tactics. The top management analyses this vital data to evolve better services

• Companies can choose between SaaS or on-premise models

• It is also integrable with help desk systems.

• The complaint management software records external grievances and objections

• It can also handle accusations, allegations, protestations, valid and invalid charges

• They are automatically categorized to be sent to the appropriate department for initiating the best complaint management solutions

• It acts as a central repository and distribution center

• The customer complaint software tracks the progress of outstanding tickets

• The software can also analyze recorded data to generate business insights

• Managers use the new reports to deliver more customer-friendly services

Why Does Every Business Need Complaint Management Software?

Every business, big or small, has to face disgruntled consumers. It has to set up a grievance resolution mechanism to satisfy the customers. Yes, some companies use spreadsheets, email, and phone calls as complaint management tools. However, for a company with thousands of customer complaints every day, these simple tools might become manual-intensive, error-prone, and costlier.

Beyond inefficiency and delays, the number of channels through which a company receives complaints has increased due to increasing internet popularity. Complaint management software, on the other hand, is reliable and faster. It offers the following benefits to a business:

1. Better ROI

A larger customer base is correlated with better profits. Moreover, you will be spending less money on handling every single grievance with a better complaint resolution system. According to a 2017 customer service report by American Express, seven out of ten average American customers are willing to pay extra for the same product if the brand offers better customer service.

Thus, good complaint management software will improve your ROI. According to Bain & Company, improving the consumer retention rate by a mere 5% is shown to improve the profits between 25% and 95%.

2. Quick Acknowledgement

In unreliable systems, complaint recording and data logging get problematic. Customer service teams also fail to coordinate properly. But a complaint management system ensures a reliable solution.

The software even tracks and updates the grievances. It can also be used to send the correct acknowledgments to the complainant quickly. The customer also feels relieved and valued when he or she sees a well-written email response. According to Temkin Group, this speed is one of the major issues while dealing with B2B customers.

3. Accountability

The best complaint management software also guarantees effective communication. The customer service team can co-ordinate responses without any confusion. All the complaints, interactions, and responses are time-stamped. Their dates are also clearly mentioned to prevent delayed responses. These digital tickets ensure accountability and improve team coordination and productivity.

4. Security And Privacy

Customer data is vital for your business growth. Any loss of such data can lead to a bad reputation. Since a company receives thousands of complaints every day, loss of data becomes inevitable. The complaint management system facilitates by assuring data security.

Many solutions offer features to implement data access privileges for efficiency. The complaints are forwarded only to the permitted employees. Further, data fields can be locked or unlocked to share only the relevant portions of the complaint.

5. Business Intelligence

A business that repeats unnecessary and unfruitful tasks is doomed to fail. Such inefficiency is unacceptable, particularly in the customer services department. The help desk has to operate a streamlined service with up-to-date protocols.

Customer complaint management software can assist in this endeavor. It can record and archive compliant data for analyses. The system looks for trends and generates monthly or periodic reports. Managers can use this intelligence for two distinct purposes:

They can apply the insights to design and deliver more efficient customer service.

They can calculate redundancies and eliminate them to prevent any future problems.

6. Overview Of Channels

Customers express their complaints via phone calls, third-party review sites, personal blogs, brand websites, mobile apps, social media, and email. Some businesses also offer SMS options. Thus, the number of channels to be controlled is increasing. Any mentioning of your brand on social media platforms has to be addressed immediately. 

According to a study by Eptica on social customer service, the average waiting time for resolving a complaint raised on a social media platform is 3 – 7 hours. For email, the average time taken is a little less than 8 hours. If your business cannot offer a solution within this time, you will lose your customer. Remember that word-of-mouth is more efficient than any of your costly advertisement campaigns.

Ideal Features Of The Best Complaint Management System

A reliable complaint management software is efficient and productive. It not only automates the key workflows but also generates feedback. As a result, the company's management can resolve simple to complex grievances with ease. The software is also consistent across multiple channels. And it has these unbeatable features to enhance the quality of customer services.

1. Data-Intensive

The best complaint management software collects all the important data. It logs all the information from the complaint initiation stage through responses and case closure.

2. Asset Allocation

The top online complaint management system optimally assigns the company resources. The investigators have privileged access to case history and all the relevant reports.

3. Memorable Customer Experience

Complaint management software reduces administrative effort. The users can set up pop-ups, email notifications, and forum responses to deliver a self-service experience to customers.

4. Collaboration Tools

Team collaboration is enhanced with the help of a complaint management system. Tickets are issued, shared, and linked together to deliver a cohesive, time-bound response to any complaint.

5. Screen Sharing

The software provides an intuitive dashboard for sharing information. The team members can investigate thoroughly using the formatted data.

6. Omni-channel Support

Complaint management software supports multiple devices and tools. Users have a single platform to communicate using diverse channels like email, phone, webchat, social media, etc.

7. 24X7 Data Access

Secure complaint tracking software is also mobile and web-friendly. Besides, it integrates with existing databases and software to enforce continuity.

8. Productive Customization

The complaint handling software can customize workflows, tickets, URLs, customer portals, etc. It also offers friendly interfaces for the help desk to quickly search and retrieve valuable information from a centralized database.

What Should We Consider When Purchasing Complaint Management Software?

Complaint management software is beneficial to small, medium, and large enterprises. It is not wise to pick one of the top five market choices or the option that your benchmark/competitor chooses. Each business has a unique business model, and it needs a reliable solution to suit the same. Thus, the businesses have to rely on the following selection criteria while making a purchase.

1. Best Features

Visual appeal and friendly user interfaces are essential but not the only elements to consider. The complaint management system should also have a rich set of features. It has to offer centralized system control, internal data management, and sharing. Also, the software should speed up data processing through optimal resource usage.

Usually, the number of features increases with the budget for the software. It is imperative to choose the set of features that are currently essential for your business or be really to shell out a considerably large budget for an all-inclusive solution.

2. Easy Integration

Every business aspires for a modern, smart complaint management system. The software is a primary tool for the customer service department and any auxiliary teams supporting it. However, it has to access information from other departments, and employees across departments utilize the software reports.

The software has to integrate well with existing CRM, help desk, customer service, quality management, and knowledge assurance systems. They can be sought from vendors who design products with a rich set of APIs. This integration also reduces the cost and complexity of data migration and additional software requirements for collaboration.

3. Employee Training

New complaint management software onboarding and training are always tricky. Employee confidence is important while installing a new system. And you have to factor in software training costs, time, and work schedules. Make sure to choose a solution with an easy-to-use dashboard, video tutorials, and simple-to-learn features. Some companies prefer choosing vendors who offer training and induction services.

4. Insightful Reports

The best customer complaint software can create reports with customizable parameters. It can also configure specific report forms using all the vital data. It is best to choose solutions that offer graphical representations too.

5. Scalable Solution

A hosted cloud or web-based complaint management system is highly contemporary. It is a scalable solution that can accommodate growing user numbers. It is also dynamic enough to handle the increased data storage demands.

6. Cost Constraints

Finally, choose a vendor that offers transparent, flexible pricing plans. The complaint software should be inexpensive to install, maintain, operate, and scale-up.

Market Trends For Understanding A Complaint Management Software

The complaint management software is used across the global business verticals. It is expected to retain this supremacy for the forecast period of 2018-2026.

The global market value of the complaint management system was US$1.9 billion in 2018. It is projected to register a healthy growth to reach US$8.2 billion by 2026. The compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.2% for this forecast period also augurs well for the software vendors.

The best complaint management software vendors bank on growing automation. They are also well aware of the changing business dynamics. Modern companies lay a lot of emphasis on new technologies for better brand reputation and customer experience. And here are the top trends that are currently seen in this genre.

1. Cloud-Based

The customer complaint management system with cloud-based features like internal data delivery, direct IT control, and others allow users to utilize their resources better, process data faster, and in the long run, it is cost-efficient too.

2. The Demand From The Public Sector

Since the past few years, the public departments are showing interest in adopting the complaint management system for acquiring complaints from citizens in a consistent manner. Thus, the demand for a unified system where it is possible to collect complaints, no matter which department that citizen has a concern, is growing. The healthcare segment is one of the top departments currently demanding such systems.

3. Device Compatibility

The IT and technology department is growing, and this leads to several devices being used in general by the end-users and businesses. Thus, businesses are looking for solutions that are accessible through various mobile devices to manage complaints throughout the day.

4. Full-Scale Automation

Modern business has been redefined by big data, IoT, AI, and ML techniques. The complaint management system with full automation in handling complaints, generating reports, tracking brand mentioning, and generating tickets are in demand. The companies are also favoring solutions that can assign priorities based on user preferences and assign the tickets to appropriate agents for faster resolution.

5. Voice Analysis

Today, the trend of voice complaints is already in full swing. The market is also expecting solutions with features allowing the complaint management software to collect information from voice feedback.

IBM Watson contains Tone Analyzer, which can conduct social listening to capture complaints, understand emotions, and forward the complaints to respective departments. Such automated voice-analyzing bots are expected to be a part of the software soon.

No company can survive or expand without a brand reputation. An efficient complaint management system software assures it by enhancing the company's online reputation and market image. Annually, American companies lose more than 62 billion dollars due to bad customer service. Does your business afford to lose money? If not, it is time to pick the right complaint management software for your business.

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