manifesto

I believe one of the biggest challenges facing organisations today is focusing too much on ‘closing the complaint’ to meet regulatory targets, rather than pausing to examine how we got here.

A complaint usually arises when the customer is let down by a process, people, or product.

It isn’t the end of a customer journey; it is evidence of it.

A well-managed complaint weighs the perspective and evidence of all stakeholders and presents fair and reasonable, evidence-based outcomes.

Yet day after day, I see organisations respond to complaints with an attitude of ‘it’s done’ or ‘we’re sorry’, without providing meaningful explanation, transparency or accountability.

There is a saying in the industry that all complaints are gifts.

They are gifts because they provide an opportunity to take a step back, take a breath, and dissect the sequence of events that led to the complaint.

When the priority becomes closing the complaint rather than understanding it, we risk losing the very insight that makes complaints a gift.

When we discover something isn’t working, we should ask why and provide stakeholders with insights so they can nip it in the bud.

Working in complaints, I strive to dissect the who, what, where, when, and why for every case that crosses my desk. I often draw on analogies like the frontline of an organisation applies the band-aids, and the Internal Dispute Resolution (IDR) specialists run the full diagnostics and employ specialised treatment.

A complaints analyst should diagnose where the breakdown occurred: was it a one-off or systemic, could it happen again, what should the organisation do differently?

If complaints are the symptoms, root cause analysis is the diagnosis.

The most dangerous thing an organisation can do is take a complaint at face value.

More information is needed.