close the case, seed the insight

Analysing recently closed cases is bread and butter of my morning routine. A customer calls unhappy; we tell them what we need and maybe apologise for not meeting expectations; the complaint is registered and closed.

Once, I came across a case where the item required is usually something we can bend the rules on, depending on the case. So, I navigate my way to the case file and start documenting what has been recorded, and it doesn’t take me long to realise the thing the member was unhappy about - the thing our frontline said we needed… we didn’t actually need. The customer had followed the process and sent us a complete file, albeit not in the preferred way.

So with the rule book under one (metaphorical) arm and the customer’s file under the other, I go to the front line and ask what happened and why. The outcome was a misguided assumption based on another scenario.

After a conversation and some outside-the-box thinking, the action was taken, and a call was made to the customer to confirm. Now the complaint was really resolved, and the case was closed.

But the learning opportunity does not stop there. We have to ask ourselves: why did this happen? Why the misguided assumption?

Because humans are complicated, and this customer scenario was tres complicated. When the front line ran their yes/no checklist, it did not account for the member’s scenario of ‘yes, but,’ so the answer was ‘no’. This is not their fault; this is a flaw in a system built on binary logic and an opportunity to empower human discretion when customers don’t fit the one-size-fits-all strategy.

If I’d stopped at this customer and closed the case, next time another customer could have the same concerns by running the diagnositic and asking why we’ve found the root cause of the assumption. This has enabled us to plan the improvement and trigger discussions of how we can avoid the scenario in the future.

The lesson here was not to take things at face value and to keep asking why and what now.

A well-closed complaint case is not one that ticks the boxes; it’s the one that raises questions about the experience and demonstrates how an organisation answers.

seriously, show rather than tell

Have you ever had a business respond to your enquiry, feedback, or complaint with “we take your complaint seriously”

What do you think that means?

To me, it’s an empty sentiment - a clerk standing at the gate with his clipboard in his hand: ‘we hear you, now carry on’.

There is no tangible call to action or declaration of intent.

And that’s where I think careful consideration has more impact. I

To me, careful consideration is deep thinking. It means stopping to understand what happened, weighing the evidence, identifying what should have happened, and thinking about what is a reasonable next action.

For simple matters, this can be taking a step back and reviewing the situation. For complex matters, it could be employing root cause techniques such as the five whys.

I’m always asking my team to document on every occasion: what happened, what should have happened, and what we did to fix it.

Another important part is the person making the complaint. Nothing says we hear you more than picking up the phone and locking them into a conversation. Sometimes the complainant will be on board; sometimes they’ll have abandoned ship - it happens!

Taking a complaint seriously doesn’t always mean having the answers they want.

It’s just important to show that a complaint has been taken seriously by taking action and including them on the journey.

So, there’s nothing wrong with saying we take your complaint seriously; I just think the sentence is incomplete.

More information needed.