Businesses Turn Customer Frustration Into Source of Innovation

Customer feedback is a call to action and a source of innovation, Concora Credit SVP of Operations Kari Lyncha writes in a new PYMNTS eBook, “The Listening Economy: How Customer Conversations Are Transforming Financial Services.”

Customer feedback isn’t just commentary to be collected — it should spark action. Every subtle behavior pattern, complaint or repeated question is a signal pointing toward an experience that should be reviewed. Yet many organizations treat feedback as a data point rather than something to act on. At Concora Credit, we treat this input as a roadmap — one that guides us toward building deeper relationships and smarter solutions.

A recurring theme in our service interactions was frustration with having to speak to a representative. Consider customers who had to call in to make a debit card payment. The request wasn’t complicated, but the process was — and customers let us know through post-call feedback. Acting on that feedback, we added debit card payment functionality to our mobile app and the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) unit. The result? Fewer calls, greater satisfaction and a more seamless experience aligned with the consumers’ expectations of how things should work.

But feedback doesn’t always come through formal channels. It often emerges in the course of daily service interactions. After we implemented a change to our login, we saw an uptick in customers having trouble registering for online access. In response, we created a troubleshooting guide that walks team members through the process step by step. It includes fact-finding prompts and secure lookup links, allowing our team to assist customers effectively without exposing sensitive information. This tool was built due to patterns flagged by our frontline team members — proof that employees are often the first to spot recurring issues. When organizations make it easy for these insights to surface and be shared, they gain a clearer view of the full customer experience. And in turn, they can provide the tools and resources teams need to resolve issues more efficiently.

Data adds another dimension. If a customer contacts us multiple times by phone in a short window, it signals something unresolved. At Concora Credit, we use those patterns to prioritize action — routing repeat call center contacts to experienced agents or proactively reaching out before it leads to a complaint. This is feedback in motion. When customer behavior becomes part of how we listen, service becomes smarter and more personalized by design.

The thread through all of this is attentiveness — not just to what customers say but to what they show us through their actions. Customers feel heard when they see real improvements to your processes, and they begin to trust that you care about them. That kind of trust turns routine interactions into stronger relationships.

Ultimately, feedback isn’t just a mechanism for fixing problems. It’s a source of innovation. Whether expressed directly or revealed through patterns, it helps organizations evolve in ways that matter most to the people they serve.