Improving Complaint Management

By Greg Coleman

Service and support organizations invariably receive complaints from customers. You would expect that most organizations would have programs in place to manage complaints. While this seems logical, it is not always the case. In addition, many organizations that have complaint processes focus mainly on resolving immediate issues and do not perform root-cause analysis on what is driving the complaints. Here are five steps to improve a customer complaint management process.

1. Document the Process

An effective complaint management process should be fully documented so that all parties involved can execute it. The process should generally include:

• Clear definitions of what represents a complaint
• The potential sources of complaints
• Methods for handling and escalating complaints
• Goals for responding to and resolving complaints
• Methods for tracking and reporting on complaint status

2. Broadly Define Complaint Sources

Many organizations take a narrow view of what constitutes a complaint. Generally speaking, the service and support organization should be the focal point for all complaints received by the company since, theoretically, it has the processes in place to manage them. Example complaint sources may include:

• Customer support interactions by telephone and electronic channels
• Feedback given directly to field service engineers while onsite with a customer
• Comments sent directly to the corporate or support website or via email
• Feedback from satisfaction surveys, including low ratings or negative verbatim comments
• Issues forwarded from sales, marketing, or executive management
• Direct feedback from customers at user groups or conferences

3. Measure and Manage Complaints

Most service and support organizations have relatively sophisticated customer management systems that track customer issues. Unfortunately, not enough use these systems to track complaints. In addition, many organizations only track their own complaints, meaning those originating during service interactions. Once an issue is forwarded to another organization, it drops off the radar screen. To address these issues:

• Leverage the customer management system to track all forms of complaints
• Classify the source and nature of complaints for reporting and analysis
• Maintain ownership of complaints escalated to other organizations
• Review complaint status regularly to ensure response and resolution goals are met

4. Take a Holistic View

Resolving the immediate issue identified by a customer has to be a priority. However, this can be equivalent to treating the symptom rather than the cause. Discovering what drove the issue to begin with, then identifying patterns in complaints, will allow the organization to eliminate future occurrences and potentially improve customer satisfaction and retention. Consider the following to help identify and cure the root causes of complaints:

• Report on the number and frequency of complaints by source and type
• Look for trends and patterns in the types and frequency of complaints being received
• Segment complaints by service channel, offering, product, or organization and provide reporting to the groups affected
• Get staff and other affected organizations involved in developing solutions to address root causes

5. Communicate the Results

Where appropriate, results of actions taken to address specific or generalized complaints should be communicated to the customer base. By communicating results, you let customers know that you care about their feedback and are actively working to address their concerns. Consider these communication methods:

• Directly communicate plans, actions, and results to strategic customer accounts
• Publish a list of issues and actions on the service and support section of the website
• Include the list in company or service and support newsletters sent to customers

Reviewing the complaint management process and following these five steps can have a positive impact on customer satisfaction. Programs such as the Service Capability & Performance (SCP) Standards, which define a stringent set of performance criteria, can help drive improvements in complaint management and other key business practices used within service and support.