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Companies get complaints in many areas. Customers complain on the telephone to inside sales. Truck drivers complain to shipping personnel. Customers send back faulty products or clients call in to complain about the lousy service the company has provided. All of these need to be gathered into one database. Listen to these sources and get the complaints described and categorized into one system. List each with its specific details of what caused the problem and who is assigned to solving them one at a time to the customer’s satisfaction. It is easy to listen to them. It is hard to see to it they are all resolved to the customers’ satisfaction.
Assign a person or department to gather all the complaints and follow them until they are resolved. Here are a few items that will help ensure this approach works effectively.
- Complaint is recorded, analyzed and documented. Each complaint is recorded with all the customer information, customer contact and his information, a complaint start date, a categorization (type of problem to identify patterns or system failures), a person assigned to correct the problem, customer contact information, and an estimated due date for resolution.
- Keep the complaint active, track it and measure its age. Each complaint stays active and is followed up each day until resolved with the respective customer. It is aged and the report is sorted oldest first to newest last. Oldest complaints get immediate attention and cause increasing headaches to those parties responsible for their resolution.
- Complaints assigned to an owner. Each complaint has an employee’s name (department) who is assigned and responsible for resolution until it is approved by the customer.
- Analyze resolved complaints. Why did they occur? What happened? Where are we failing? What could we do to cut the complaints and increase customer satisfaction? Categorize the types, reasons and sources for complaints. Is it bad products or service we do not do well? Is the complaint stemming from something our people are not doing, or not doing well? Which section of the company involves the most complaints? Track complaints as a number and also as a percentage of total shipments possibly if that is appropriate for your industry.
