Developing and maintaining a complaint-friendly culture
Featured in the Complaint handling for positive outcomes training manual
By Nina Lockwood
Category: Customer Service
Credit price: 3 download credits (Single user)
In many organisations, the philosophy of how the company views complaints is unclear. As far as the employees are concerned, there is a need for clarity in relation to the various rules and regulations, or policies, they have to adhere to. How many times have you been told, ‘I’m sorry, but it’s company policy’, when making a request or complaint to an organisation? To develop a truly complaint-friendly culture, the organisation’s philosophy regarding complaints must be communicated clearly and updated on a regular basis as new information and experience expand its influence. Of course, what translates the philosophy into reality is people, and they have a huge impact on how successfully the organisation is seen to deal with customer complaints. This in turn shows itself in customer loyalty and satisfaction data, and ultimately in the profitability of the organisation.
First, you ask the participants to define their organisation’s philosophy in relation to complaints – frequently this is an unknown, or at best a blurred, message. You encourage the participants to discuss company policies and their potential impact on effective complaint handling. Next, the participants investigate how effective their organisation is at dealing with complaints, and consider the obstacles that impact on this effectiveness. Ways to overcome the obstacle are then generated, by both management and front-line staff, with a view to a workable solution being defined and taken as an action plan from the session.
Who is it for: This training resource is intended for use by trainers to enable participants to examine the behaviours required to promote effective complaint handling and to look at ways to ensure they are consistently demonstrated within the organisation.
| Resource Type: | Activity |
| Min Group Size: | 6 |
| Max Group Size: | 12 |
| Typical Duration: | 02:45:00 |
| No of Pages: | 13 |
Resources: View standard resources for Fenman training activities
Purpose: This training resource is intended for use by trainers with all members of staff, both managerial and customer facing. It is appropriate for line managers to attend with their reportees so that the messages are consistent in relation to what behaviours are desirable and how they will work together to make them happen back at the workplace. This may, however, be a challenge to participants’ openness in the ‘Roadblocks’, and ‘Getting rid of roadblocks’ exercises and, therefore, it might be appropriate for managers to leave during this session and return to hear the results of the action planning session. Alternatively, if there are three or more managers present, they could work together as a separate group.
Download the training activity, Developing and maintaining a complaint-friendly culture as featured in the Fenman training manual; Complaint handling for positive outcomes