Archive for the ‘Complaints handling training’ Category

Taking a look at the complaints handling news, results published in  June are worth a second look. This news that complaints volumes are rising at Britain’s railway companies can easily be accepted. Most people will have heard of overcrowding. In late June, 50 year old pieces of railway infrastructure struggled with the heat. No wonder the customer service performance was badly affected.

Digging behind the story, it is clear that as customer service satisfaction has fallen, the number of complaints have risen. That too is not unexpected news as it is common sense that having fewer satisfied customers is likely to lead to you having more dissatisfied customers. Why is it then that so many businesses find it hard to believe that excellent complaints handling can increase customer loyalty?

There is hope

I think I may have found one of the reasons. My work on complaints handling has found that firms complaint systems are programmed to measure and record the complaints and not the consequences of the complaints handling. Much emphasis is put into complaints systems encouraging fast and thorough resolution. There is a sense of win/lose about them. “Justified or not?” is a phrase often used. This language is often drawn from the legal influences of regulation and potential litigation. Such language is often defensive and speaks of a mindset that complaints are to be avoided rather than welcomed as opportunities to improve. But are businesses measuring whether those who complain remain with the organisation or choose to leave? Now that would be an interesting measure for the success of your complaints handling. The Lifetime Value of the customer might actually be higher for those who have complained.

In the drive for process improvement don’t forget the people

The emphasis of the FSA on “Root Cause Analysis” of financial services complaints is a laudable effort to get the focus onto putting things right for the future customer experience. But great though this logical tool is for helping tease out process and product improvements, it is less helpful in my view on the people issues.

It is hard in such a process to consider the motivation of a complainant. How much is it about getting redress or simply an apology? Are there feelings involved? The NHS Ombudsman writes from time to time about patients who simply just want an acknowledgement that a mistake was made and a genuine apology for it. Clearly finding out from a complainant what would put the matter right could be very helpful if you are trying to resolve a complaint. It might be simpler that it seems. Understanding the motivation and feelings is an important part of good complaints handling.

Are these customers loyal?

Then again there are those complainants who want to stop the problem they have experienced happening to someone else. Why would they care about this unless they were likely to want to remain a customer? Often complainants want to see improvements in service because they want to continue to use you. After all they made a decision to use your business and it is reassuring to them to know they made the right decision. Some research undertaken by a UK insurance business found that those who complained had a higher customer retention level than those who didn’t. So solving complaints can increase loyalty. Are you measuring this?

So when you hear that customer satisfaction is down and complaints up on Britain’s railways, think about your business and consider how with excellent customer service and complaints handling, customer loyalty could be increased.

At Training To Achieve we have set up a specialist Complaints Handling Training arm called Reduce Complaints we want to see businesses improve their customer service and complaints handling: rather than experience a downward spiral as has been seen on the railways in recent news coverage, we want to help firms start an upward cycle. We think complaints are great, a good thing and that they should be encouraged.  Otherwise the chance of meeting customer needs and improving is very limited.  We also believe that it is possible to Reduce Complaints by actually resolving complaints and making sure they don’t recur.

We’d love to hear from you if you want some help with improving customer service or complaints handling or simply just want to talk customer service.

Gordon Miles

If you’ve been wondering what our complaints handling training is like, why not take a look at what one of our satisfied customers thinks about our complaints handling training?

If you would like more information just email me or call on 0845 165 6269

Alison

Alison Miles-Jenkins

Training To Achieve

Is good complaints handling simply about having good systems and well-motivated people? That is part of the answer but it is not simply about these two elements. To improve your complaints handling performance you need to begin with the setting the right customer service culture. If your culture does not value complaints then no matter how good your staff are at resolving complaints the real benefits of good complaints handling will be lost. This article considers complaints handling leadership and culture. It offers suggestions to help organisations set the right environment for outstanding complaints handling.

Are you missing something?

How sure are you that you are receiving all the complaints about your service? Is your complaints system recording every complaint? Is every expression of dissatisfaction treated as a complaint?

Much has been written about the readiness of customers to demand a better service. There is a sense that nowadays customers are willing to complain when they don’t receive the service they wanted. But is that really what happens? Are the complaints you receive just the tip of the iceberg?

Complaints leadership is a good place to start

The reason I am posing these questions is because I often find when looking at complaints handling that the formal systems of the organisation only record some not all of the complaints. This suggests to me that the customer facing staff are not trained to recognise and deal with complaints. If a complaint goes un-noticed then customer loyalty is at risk. The customer may then simply bad mouth your service to anyone else who is listening. The problem is made worse because you don’t have the opportunity to resolve the complaint because you didn’t notice it. Having been brushed aside the customer may well not take this further with you.

There is a real need to make sure your customer service culture embraces complaints fully. Complaints are a gift. They are useful indicators or areas where you may be able to improve your service and so improve your business. Most managers will accept this as a truism but time and again in the press we read about the need to have senior management commitment. The BBC has recently been looking at this for their own complaints. Some Police Forces have too.

The reason that this returns as a perennial issue is because to set the right customer service culture needs leadership. This leadership needs to extend to complaints handling. To have great success your business has to be committed to solving complaints. You should be aiming for an approach which says: “your problem is our problem”.

This means that your most senior executives and management need to be committed. It is not by accident that international complaints handling standards compliance includes looking for the personal endorsement of the Chief Executive to that commitment. Responsibility also needs to be at a high level. A senior manager who has direct access to the CEO should be responsible. This commitment and drive from the top can make all the difference. Recently in the UK the Financial Services Authority has insisted that all banks have a director who takes responsibility for complaints handling.

Are your employees getting the right support?

This senior management commitment is vital but so is the commitment of the staff. Employees need to accept the benefits of and practice good complaints handling. That means complaints handling training for your staff, but also empowering staff to contribute to use the feedback to improve the product or service offerings. This training should also focus on assisting customers lodge complaints as well as on how to resolve them.

If the culture of the organisation is focused on customer service and complaints handling you may get more complaints in the short term. That is good news as it gives you more opportunities to put things right for the customers. Once you have the right culture you can then focus on improving your complaints handling.

Alison Miles-Jenkins
Founder & CEO

In recent articles we’ve been raising the profile of social media complaints handling.  There is growing evidence that customers are increasingly turning to Twitter and Facebook to vent their frustrations at having their complaints ignored.  Online campaigning is becoming a power tool forcing businesses to fix unresolved complaints.

News from Australia recently featured the consumer group Choice which said its members were using social media to air their complaints.  Choice was encouraging businesses to monitor what people were saying about them and as a result, rectify complaints more quickly.

Ingrid Just, a spokeswoman for Choice, said consumers were finding that Twitter and Facebook were successful in getting results after receiving the cold shoulder from customer service departments or generic email responses.

“Many businesses monitor what people are saying about them online and some are taking proactive steps to rectify problems by directly contacting those who are posting comments,” Ms Just said.

Ms Just said companies were reviewing their service standards as a result of online activism.

”Vodafone revised its service and network model as a result of consumer complaints on vodafail.com” Ms Just said.

There are plenty of other examples, including a man who used Facebook to complain that replacement parts for were not delivered.

Within a day some twenty employees of the supplier had seen the complaint and the company’s national director of sales emailed the customer directly to say he would sort out the problem.

So you can see that getting your complaints handlers comfortable with dealing with complaints from the world of Social Media is an essential part of good complaints handling.

Alison Miles-Jenkins
Training To Achieve