The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has logged well over three times more customer complaints about national banks this year thanks to a state-of-the-art telephone call center.
Agency Ombudsman Samuel P. Golden said the high volume of complaints- about 7,500 a month-reflects the hiring of 26 people to staff a computerized telephone system.
From April, when the $2.9 million system began operating, through November, the OCC logged 42,900 consumer complaints. That compares with just 16,000 complaints in all of 1997.
"We have gotten this extreme number of calls, and we have yet to market our service," Mr. Golden said. Customers are finding the "800" number on literature from banks.
One-quarter of the complaints this year are related to credit cards. For example, customers called the agency with concerns when introductory interest rates on their cards switched suddenly to higher, permanent rates.
Service issues, which former acting Comptroller Julie L. Williams recently highlighted as an industry problem, accounted for 15% of all complaints. Of the 8,634 complaints about deposit accounts, more than 2,700, or 31%, were connected to service issues such as bank fees.
Customers also complained that while fees were going up personalized service was declining as banks relied more on automated systems.
The numbers also revealed that several hot-button political issues hardly registered as a share of all complaints. Of the total, only 300 were complaints about banks invading their customers' privacy. Of the more than 6,700 service-related complaints, only 451 concerned the contentious issue of ATM fees. Only 1% of the complaints were about insurance sales. However, Mr. Golden said that many complaints about bank insurance sales are typically filed with state insurance commissioners.
Mr. Golden, who became the agency's first ombudsman in 1992, took over the customer complaint system last year. The old system, he said, was inefficient. Customers sat on hold for 45 minutes or more and often hung up before reaching a representative, he said.
In addition to trimming hold time to just a few minutes, the new infrastructure also speeds up the phone call by giving callers automated options.
Mr. Golden reports data monthly to the comptroller. In April, Mr. Golden said, he will give a full year of data to banks, with breakdowns of the complaints filed against them and comparisons with other banks of the same size.
Already, the data have had an impact on the Comptroller's Office. Mr. Golden said the high number of service-related complaints, in part, led Ms. Williams to speak out last month about customer service issues. (Ms. Williams returned to her post as the agency's chief counsel on Dec. 8 when John D. Hawke Jr. became comptroller.)
"In the long term, it is a very fundamental issue that cuts to the core of safety and soundness," Mr. Golden said.
