Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
SlideShare a Scribd company logo

Complaints Management Part 1

•
•
Dr. Ted Marra
Dr. Ted Marra

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 of 4
Download to read offline
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
Customer initiation Contact process Fulfilment process Validation process Escalation process Qualityworld 33 feature 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
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
‘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 feature

More Related Content

Complaints Management Part 1

  • 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 feature 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 feature