Your colleagues
What's it like to work here? Meet a few of your new colleagues
Jasmine Claxton - Complaints Advisor
7.30
I usually start my day at a reasonable time. Working from home and starting at 10am means I have time to spare in the morning. Depending on how I feel that morning I will either start my day with a twenty-minute run or thirty minutes of Yoga. I also do a little bit of a tidy around the house and maybe a load of washing if I feel up to it.
10.00
This week it’s my turn to cover mailbox and admin tasks as well as working complaints. So, my first job of the day is to complete our admin checks. I go through the complaints register and check the new complaints that have come in from the previous day , make sure they are eligible for us to investigate and keep track of how many we have received. I then create an investigation folder, to keep everything organised and send acknowledgements to the clients to let them know we have received their complaint and we will aim to respond as quickly as possible.
11.00
Once all the admin checks are out of the way I check though our mailbox emails to see what we have received. We could have received new complaints that need logging on the register or just general requests from clients about their plan which we will forward onto the appropriate department. We also deal with other requests such as, Subject Access Requests, 'right to erasure', and 'official receiver'. 'Official receiver' is where a previous client of ours has applied for bankruptcy and the Insolvency Service need information from us.
11.30
I start to look into the complaint that I have been allocated that day. We all receive an allocation email which will let us know what cases we are working and a brief idea of what the complaint is about and when it was first logged. The particular complaint I have is from a client who had started receiving interest and charges by their bank because we haven’t correctly advised them on the client’s plan. The client wanted us to compensate the added amounts. We’re happy to compensate clients when we've made a mistake. I decided to contact the client’s creditor before lunch to discuss the issue and the communication that had been send between us and them. After quite some time on the call it became clear that the mistake was actually on their end and we had correctly informed them of the client’s plan, the creditor agreed to remove the added interest and charges.
14.30
After lunch I contact the client and discussed with them that their creditor has noticed the mistake was on their end and they will be clearing the balances for the added charges. The client was happy to hear that the money was being deducted and thanked us for our help in resolving the matter. I explained that in terms of her complaint with us, the outcome wouldn’t be "upheld" as we didn’t cause the error, but I will note their account with the outcome, so we have future reference that their creditor did make a mistake.
15.00
I give the mailbox a quick look in to see if there are any urgent emails that need responding to as soon as possible, for example: a very vulnerable client or something that is detrimental. If not, I will save them for the end of the day as I finish at 6pm.
15.15
I then move back to my allocated complaints. My next one is about a client who isnt happy with the time taken to set up their plan. These kinds of cases can sometimes take quite a while to investigate, especially if the client has been with us a long time and there have been multiple email and phone exchanges. In this particular case we had been clear in asking for the client’s agreement before we could set up their plan for a while however it hadn’t been received yet. There was no evidence to suggest we had made any mistakes when dealing with the client’s plan and so I didn’t uphold their complaint. We aim to close a complaint within three working days however, if we have a backlog it can take longer. This client complaint was over the three working days, and I couldn’t get a hold of them by phone so I start to write up a final response letter to send them, this lets them know the outcome of our investigation and our decision. It also details that they can go to the financial ombudsman if they aren’t happy with the outcome.
17.30
I use my last half hour to clear the mailbox and see what else has come in during the day. I will log a new complaint received by email directly in to the mailbox and forward some emails to the correct department that have been sent to us by accident.
18.00
I finish my day, close everything down and put anything confidential away. Since working from home I can just head straight downstairs and start some tea. I usually spend my evenings either watching a film, playing a game or if I have the evening free with my partner we might go rock climbing.
