Handling complaints

What if you fail to meet your client's expectations and they complain? Do you deal with the complaint, or do you put it in your desk drawer and hope it will go away?

Actually, you get back to them promptly and talk to them about it. Promise to resolve it within a given time-frame - and do that systematically for every complaint.

Your clients might still be unhappy with what you supplied, but they'll be happier with you and your company as they know you have responded to their complaint and their issue is being addressed.

And if you don't talk to them, they'll talk to their friends and business contacts about you and your company, and your reputation will - slowly but surely - slip away.

Put in a process

• Devise a system to log, track and resolve complaints; 
• Decide which staff will be involved and get them some training if necessary - they may have to deal with frustration, anger or confrontation over the phone;
• Set target time-scales for contacting the client and for resolving their issues;
• Tell the client what these time-scales are, and talk to them regularly about your progress;
• Take it really seriously - carry out regular audits at director level to ensure things are being done on time;
• Use your audits to drive continual improvement; and 
• Carry your staff with you and reward them for their performance in a difficult role.

This sounds like a lot of work

Not really. If you have a culture of client satisfaction and continual improvement, you are probably carrying out most of these steps anyway. All you have to do is make this systematic - take out the uncertainty so that everyone knows 'who, what, why and when', with some steps of the process always being done by the same people.

And remember, most growing, high-performing businesses are process-led, so if you want to be like that I guess you'll have to start putting some processes in.

How can I get help?

A client asked me what was meant by a complaints handling system that conformed to the guidelines in IS0 10002.

Now, these International Standards don't normally tell you how to do it, but amazingly there is a really good explanation in ISO 100002:2004(E) of a process for a small business - look up Appendix A.

So if you feel confident to put in your own process I suggest you start with that - or you could take advice. We'd be only too happy to help.

And the last thing is - don't hide behind your Terms and Conditions. We've all experienced being given the brush off when we thought we had a legitimate complaint - it makes you think twice about using the same company again.