As one of the top 3-5 global experts on this topic, find out why Xerox, IBM, Royal Bank of Scotland Group, Irish Life, Ralston Purina and a host of other well known organisations around the globe have chosen to us this 'best practise' approach to complaints and enquiry management

1. Over the past 20 years Ted Marra has worked
with hundreds of organisations tackling com-plaints
management - a subject which is
now firmly on the quality agenda.
With pressure from ISO,
EFQM and other regula-tors,
the interest level
appears to be sustain-able.
In the first of
two articles he
outlines a first
class approach
to managing
keep
complaining
32 Qualityworld
part 1 of 2
complaints
feature

2. Customer initiation Contact process Fulfilment process Validation process
Escalation
process
Qualityworld 33
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Closed loop
practice complaints process beginning
with this ‘customer initiation’ step.
Ask yourself some key questions
So why is the term ‘best practice’ used
here? Because it reflects a thorough under-standing
of ISO and excellence model/
Malcolm Baldrige requirements. This
process has been benchmarked against the
best and has stood the test of time. In a
nutshell, how would you answer these
questions - related to the process in figure
1 - for your organisation?
• how well does the customer know
where or how to complain? (contact
process)
• how effective are your staff in resolv-ing
the complaint? (fulfilment process)
• how do you know if you have pre-served
the customer’s loyalty even
though they have made a complaint?
(validation process)
• do you have a rapid method for detect-ing
and acting on time-sensitive or
issues of particular severity/risk? (esca-lation
process)
• how do you maintain the effectiveness
of the complaint process and utilise
information from it to drive improve-ment?
The contact process
Just how well do your customers know
who to complain to or where to complain?
Do you know? The harsh reality is that
most organisations do a notoriously poor
Management process
job of educating their customers on this
topic. So what are the critical components
that need to take place at this step? Figure
2 outlines the key points to consider.
Presuming the customer has been properly
educated (and by the way, it usually turns
out that if you give the customer the rules
of the game, they will abide by them), just
how accessible are you?
• how easy do you make it for customers
to reach someone who can help them?
• are they immediately faced with a
menu of choices that never ends?
• are they placed in queue for 20 min-utes
listening to boring messages or
music which is too loud or obnoxious?
• just how many barriers do you create
for customers during this upfront con-tact
process?
The reality of it is that customers general-ly
have two key expectations when they
contact an organisation to complain. The
first of these is ‘can I get through?’ and the
second is ‘when I get through, will the per-son
be able to help me?’. If you fail on
either of these, the customer will be even
less satisfied than they were before they
tried to contact you.
Clearly, this example relates to telephone
interaction, but still represents the most
popular contact type for most organisa-tions.
However, making the leap to letters
or email is not that difficult. Instead of an
ideally free phone number, is there a freep-
Figure 1. A best practice complaints process
Frankly, there have been quite
enough articles singing the prais-es
of complaints as a golden
opportunity or a treasure chest of
improvement. To put it crudely,
any executive or quality manager who has-n’t
got this message is quite possibly men-tally
challenged.
Research over the past few years in partic-ular
has continued to show that customers
are becoming more demanding, less toler-ant
of failure and more willing to defect to
competitors. Dealing successfully with cus-tomer
enquiries, problems and complaints
can not only preserve the relationship in a
difficult or problematic situation, but actu-ally
strengthen it.
It’s not rocket science
The future success of most organisations
directly links to customer relationships.
That said, many companies are still strug-gling
to come to terms with how to build
and maintain excellent customer relation-ships,
and how effective recovery from
problems and complaints can better pre-serve
the relationship. From an economic
standpoint this makes sense considering it
costs six to 20 times more to get a new
customer than to keep an existing one.
Moreover, a key factor which only a few
organisations now seem to be grasping is
that when a customer comes to do business
with an organisation, they incur two costs.
The first is simply the economic cost asso-ciated
with the purchase of the goods or
services involved.
The other cost, however, is the emotional
cost - the time and level of effort the cus-tomer
experiences with not only the pur-chase,
but use of the products and services
(especially if a problem is encountered). In
the end, the economic cost may be
extremely competitive, but if the emotion-al
cost gets too high, the customer may
seek alternatives.
The first fact that must be acknowledged is
that complaints management is largely a
reactive process, as it is the customer who
takes the initiative to complain in most
cases. Figure 1 depicts the steps in a best

3. Contact process
Fulfilment process
ost address, for example? Is there an email
address that has been made readily avail-able
to customers for their use when they
have a complaint? Is the letter or email
answered in a timely manner? How do you
recognise a complaint? There are codes to
look for in terms of the customer’s tone,
use of language or implied level of emo-tion
in the letter or email.
The last step is simply whether the cus-tomer
is able to reach someone in your
organisation who can quickly qualify the
issue the customer is calling about. In
other words, is it a complaint or something
34 Qualityworld
else (eg concern, question, compliment,
request)? This is highly dependent upon
whether there is a clear, unambiguous def-inition
of a complaint and whether the
agents are trained effectively. Believe it or
not, there are organisations out there
which say they have a complaints process,
yet have no definition of a complaint.
By the end of this stage in the overall com-plaints
process, it may well be that an
acknowledgement has been sent to the
customer if they had contacted you by let-ter
or email. It may also be that an ‘owner’
has been assigned according to the nature
of the issue involved. The bottom-line here
is what are you doing to mitigate the bar-riers
to complaining? So here are the key,
yet basic, management questions you
might want to consider addressing:
• do you have a process map which
clearly describes the steps in your com-plaints
management process? The
intent here is to raise the issue: ‘Do you
consider complaints management as a
legitimate business process or just a set
of procedures or activities?’
• how well do you educate your cus-tomers
on how or where to complain?
• how do you ensure easy access to your
organisation and its staff for customers
to complain?
• do you have a clear, unambiguous def-inition
of a complaint which is consis-tently
followed by all staff ?
• how effectively and quickly can staff
discern complaints from other sources
of customer feedback?
Fulfilment and escalation
It is during this part of the overall com-plaints
management process that the cus-tomer
relationship is either preserved or
damaged beyond repair. Just how good are
your staff ? How have you invested in them
with regards to training and information
systems? How capable have you made
them? Figure 3 outlines the elements of
the fulfilment process.
During the fulfilment process, the two
main objectives are to:
• effectively manage the interaction with
the customer to ensure the relationship
will ultimately be preserved
• gather all appropriate information to
enable an action plan to be developed
which satisfies the customer and facili-tates
process, product or service
improvement
As most of us know all too well, when the
customer complains they are often in a
heightened emotional state. Before any
meaningful dialogue can occur, the cus-tomer
must be allowed to vent their frus-trations.
It is here where your workforce
needs to be fully capable in how to defuse
anger and avoid taking what the customer
says personally. This is not always easy, as
some customers can be abusive. However,
Awareness
• do I know who to call (name of individual)?
• do I know where to call?
• do I have a current number to call? If so,
where can I find it?
• is it a free-phone number?
• can I get through when I call?
• am I placed on hold for a long time?
• is the phone answered in a timely manner?
• is the person who answers willing and
able to help me?
• do I have to be transferred to someone
else? If so, who is it?
• is this a complaint?
Accessibility
Availability and
qualification
Information capture
Issue assessment
• input appropriate codes for data cap-ture,
analysis and reporting
• record salient verbatim comments
• apply anger-reduction techniques
• apply four step process:
Understand the issue(s)
Assess the severity (escalation?)
Negotiate a solution
Follow-through on commitment
Action planning
Follow-through
(execution)
feature
Figure 2. The contact process
Figure 3. The fulfilment process
Critical components

4. ‘It does little good to negotiate a successful solution to the customer’s complaint if
no action is taken to see it through. Action requires effective communication,
coordination or even collaboration with other parts of the organisation.’
action is taken to see it through. In many
cases, action requires effective communica-tion,
coordination or even collaboration
with other parts of the organisation.
Sometimes organisations become paral-ysed
and no action occurs because of inter-nal
battles over ‘who’s going to pay’.
The unfortunate aspect here is that the cus-tomer
is compromised while internal
departments, functions or divisions battle
it out and point fingers at one another. A
good rule to follow is fix the customer
first, then worry about who’s going to pay!
In addition, organisations need to bear in
mind that the longer it takes to resolve a
complaint, the less satisfied the customer
will be. Every customer has an expectation
regarding how long it should take to
resolve an issue. Customers are not daft: if
it is a complex issue, they are usually more
than willing to give you more time to get
it right. If it’s a straightforward issue, they
will expect fast resolutions, unless you are
able to communicate with them and tell
them why this might not be possible.
There are plenty of - and these are mostly
simple - steps organisations can take to
better deal with complaints. But what if
you want to go that extra mile? Some
organisations want to differentiate their
performance in this area. Establishing a
coding system is one such way of edging
ahead of the competition.
This more advanced approach to com-plaints
management will be covered in the
second part of this article next month
by reassuring the customer that they are
there to help, staff members will be a
calming influence, rather than throwing
more petrol on the fire.
What’s the best system?
If the past 20 years has proved anything, it
is simply that agents must follow some sort
of systematic cycle of interaction with the
customer once he or she is in a rational
state and is willing to work with your peo-ple
to get the issue addressed. This will
dramatically increase the success ratio in
dealing with the customer’s complaint.
The following steps should set your organ-isation
on the right path to complaints
management.
Understand the issue
When the customer is upset, they can
throw everything but the kitchen sink at
you - recalling events that took place a
year ago or even three years ago. The role
of your staff is to sort through all this to
understand what the issue is that needs to
be addressed today.
Assess the severity
Not all problems or complaints carry the
same weight in the customer’s mind. I can
guarantee that if the customer receives an
incorrect invoice, 100 per cent of the time
they will call up and complain. However,
it is equally true that if handled properly,
the issue can be made to go away 100 per
cent of the time, as well as ensuring that
the relationship is preserved. If this same
problem occurs each month though, then
ultimately the customer will disengage.
There are some issues which may not be so
easily resolved, such as account executives
not returning a customer’s telephone calls.
This will communicate to the customer
that they are not important or being taken
for granted. Depending on the severity
(legal, liability, risk level), the issue may
need to be escalated quickly to ensure that
it gets the right level of attention. Having
criteria in place for when escalation will
occur is key, otherwise there may be a ten-dency
to escalate unnecessarily or to the
wrong level.
Negotiate a solution
A critical success factor in negotiating an
effective solution involves asking a simple,
but key question of the customer: ‘What
would you like us to do?’ Unless this ques-tion
is asked, your staff are placed in the
position of having to assume what the
customer would like to see happen. They
may guess correctly or they may not. The
bottom-line is that without knowing
where the customer is coming from, it is
hard to negotiate a mutually satisfactory
solution. Research and experience has
shown also that often the customer wants
far less than you assume.
Follow through on commitments
It does little good to negotiate a successful
solution to the customer’s complaint if no
Ted Marra is president of Marra Quality Inc, which
focuses on performance and relationship excel-lence.
He has been vice president at Walker: CSM,
president of consultancy, Care Associates and of
TARP Midwest. In these positions he concentrated
on the design, pilot testing and full implementation
of customer complaint management processes.
Q
Next month: Advanced complaints management -
establishing a formal coding system.
Qualityworld 35
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