Credit card complaints to the RBI Ombudsman grew 20% in a year. From two years in customer care I know why people escalate: they can't see what is happening to their problem. This project turns the ombudsman data into a dispute-tracking product.
Share of complaints received at RBI Ombudsman offices, FY25
Count. FY24 derived from the reported 20.04% growth.
In customer care I handled more than 500 conversations a month. Disputed charges and missing refunds followed the same pattern:
| Feature | What the customer sees | What it replaces |
|---|---|---|
| Stage tracker | Raised → Under review → Sent to merchant / network → Resolved, with the date of each step. | Repeat status calls |
| SLA countdown | "We'll update you by 14 Nov." The date turns amber when a step runs late. | Uncertainty and escalation |
| Document upload | Attach receipts or screenshots once, inside the dispute. | Email chains with operations |
| Automatic credit-balance refund | Prompt to send any credit balance back to the linked bank account, with a default after a set period. | Manual refunds and compliance risk |
| Proactive updates | Push or SMS at every stage change. | Customer chasing the bank |
As a cardholder with a disputed charge, I want to see exactly where my dispute is and when it will move, so that I don't have to call and explain it again.
As an operations analyst, I want every dispute to carry its SLA date, so that I work the ones about to breach first.
I built the dispute tracker as a clickable prototype so it can be tested with real cardholders before anyone writes production code. It covers checking status, raising a dispute, a delayed step and sending a credit balance back to the bank.
The plan: 5 cardholders who raised a dispute in the last year, 5 tasks each, with time and success recorded. The design changes wherever two or more people fail the same task. The tasks are listed beside the prototype.
Testing status: not yet run. Results will be added here.
Category shares and counts come from RBI's Annual Report of the Ombudsman Scheme 2024-25. FY24 credit card complaints (42,328) are derived by dividing the FY25 count by 1.2004. The data and the script are in this folder; the SQL version is in the data workbench.