As Mrs Tung said, HK people like to "complain, complain, complain". This represents the progress of democracy and higher awareness of consumer protection. In the financial industry, selling of investment and insurance products trigger the most difficult complaints.
As a compliance officer, part of his jobs is to investigate into complaints and advise the business people how to give an appropriate response. When I was working in banks, I had handled some interesting complaint cases about misselling of investment products. Just want to mention 3 special categories of complainants here.
Elderly Customers
Such kind of customers are loved and hated by the salespersons. On the one hand, they have a great purchasing power because they are used to keeping their savings as deposits. On the other hand, they are in generally less educated and have a limited investment horizon. Selling of long term structured products to them is quite risky. Their complaints are generally well received by both regulators and media.
But are all elderly customers "victims"? I had seen some greedy old ladies who proactively asked for purchasing high return (and of course, high risk) products. Whenever they lose money, they would pretend to be ignorant and innocent!
Professionals
They are typically lawyers or CPA. Usually they would not complain for being cheated by salespersons (face problem?), but they like to challenge the computation of product performance. They know how to play the game of complaint by sending a "professional letter" to the bank's senior management. Then the bank staff (including compliance officers) would spend a number of hours to draft a prudent reply. If the compensation demanded is just a few thousands, the senior management may surrender even the complaint is unreasonable!
Powerful Persons
Such persons would allege they have an "unusual background". They may claim to know "somebody" in the government or some large enterprises. They may even threaten (verbally) to challege the physical security of the salesperson if no compensation is paid. I had once seen a salesperson who was forced by the pressure to resign and leave HK!
Tomorrow I will talk about the handling of customer complaints.
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