This morning I attended one of the regular Institute of Customer Service forum events which are always something to look forward to. This time it was at Gentoo, the social housing and so much more not for profit organisation, based in Sunderland.
The subject was ‘The Business Impact of Complaints’ and lead to discussions on how complaints were handled in the various attending organisations and how they were analysed with a view to improving service to the customer. There were lots of good conversations but, as always with these events I am left pondering on a few issues, such as:
What is a complaint? Well that’s an easy one. According to the Financial Services Authority, the example used in this morning’s presentation a complaint is ‘Any oral or written expression of dissatisfaction, whether justified or not, from, or on behalf of, a person about the provision of, or failure to provide, a [financial] service, which alleges that the complainant has suffered (or may suffer) financial loss, material distress or material inconvenience’. But can a complaint not be immaterial and just leave the person feeling aggrieved or put out? Does this mean that a call to our service desk reporting a fault with a desktop, where they are unable to function in their job role effectively, is a complaint or just business as usual? If it is a normal part of our work then won’t this encourage us to develop the service desk to handle more calls better rather than to try and reduce the number of unproductive, dissatisfied (and complaining) customers? In essence aren’t all calls to a service desk complaints?
Can you have avoidable and unavoidable complaints? What is the difference? I find it very easy to think of an avoidable complaint such as ‘You said you would be here at 10:00 and you still haven’t turned up’ but what about an unavoidable one? Other than ‘I’m sorry but that is not a service or product we supply’ are there not just complaints we are prepared to do something about and others which we are not? Why differentiate and does this not just to encourage us to classify complaints to suit our own ends?
Is a handling process necessary? Probably yes but do we need to follow a written down process or is it reasonable to expect that people will do the right thing by the customer and the business? Should we focus our attention on defining a process and following that or defining the culture and the required ethos so that everyone does what is to be expected? Is this possible or will we just chase our tails?
Can an organisation have a single handling process? Is it possible to define a single way of handling complaints if you operate in a very diverse organisation? Do you need to distinguish complaints about policy decisions from complaints about service delivery for example? Is a complaint about price the same as a complaint about quality? Perhaps we should have a single process which delivers to multiple decision makers.
I’m sure there are many more questions and at this stage I don’t have any answers (if indeed any simple answers exist) but it gives us plenty to talk about at our next customer group meeting in January.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 
I’ve got quite strong views on this type of issue, especially how organisations treat complaints.
If we do something wrong or dont do something that causes a problem for a customers, they should be encouraged to tell us what they think so matters can be put in-place to fix the problem.
Most organisations view complaints as “moaning customers” and view them as negative rather than as a way to improve the service.
Yes I agree. A complaint is an opportuinty to improve your business. Your best customers are those who tell you when you are wrong, your worst are the ones that just go elsewhere.