Conference Agenda:
Strategic Complaint Management - Introduction
Strategic Complaint Management Day 1
Strategic Complaint Management Day 2
Strategic Complaint Management Day 3 - Workshops
Session 1: 9:00-9:45 - WINNING STRATEGIES FOR HANDLING COMPLAINTS: LESSONS LEARNED FROM ICSA MEMBERS
Dolly Konzelmann, President, International Customer Service Association (Toronto Chapter) and President, CuttingEdjj Consulting Nancy von Hapke, Membership Chair, International Customer Service Association and President (Toronto Chapter), 3D Training & Marketing
Complaints can be an enormous asset, and may be the single most accurate indicator of how well your organization is meeting its clients’ needs. A survey conducted this year by the International Customer Service Association asked its members about their complaint-handling processes, metrics, challenges, and solutions. The results are revealing, and this discussion will highlight the survey’s most helpful findings, providing valuable insight into real-life challenges and solutions implemented by ICSA members across all sectors and industries.
- Complaint-handling strategies, challenges, and best practices with universal applications from a variety of organizations
- Comparison and evaluation of practices from a wide variety of organizations
- Metrics used for monitoring complaint processes
- Optimal resource allocation for handling complaints
- Defining and capturing complaints
- Strategies for reducing complaints without compromising service levels
9:45-10:30 - BEST PRACTICES FOR THE OMBUDSMAN PROCESS
Michael Lauber, Ombudsman and CEO, Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments (OBSI)
A lack of effective communication is usually the root cause of complaints, and the best resolution processes place a heavy emphasis on dialogue with the customer. This discussion will explore complaint management systems implemented throughout Canada’s finance industry that focus on two-way communications and have nearly universal applications across the public and private sectors. He will highlight innovative tried-and-true ways of investigating client complaints, and explore new ways of ensuring that they are resolved rapidly, fairly, and with the best possible outcome.
- Complaint management lessons learned in the finance industry with practical applications across all sectors
- The role of the ombudsman
- Complaint and dispute resolution mechanisms that emphasize dialogue
- How to guarantee a complaint handler’s impartiality and independence
- Alternatives to the paper-based approach
- Building customer loyalty through effective complaint resolution
10:30-11:00 - NETWORKING BREAK
11:00-11:45 - CASE STUDY: MANAGING COMPLAINTS AND “THE HIDDEN CUSTOMER” AT DAIMLERCHRYSLER COMMERCIAL BUSES NORTH AMERICA
Steve Batho, Director of Customer Service, DaimlerChrysler Commercial Buses North America
At DaimlerChrysler Commercial Buses North America, a new formal complaint management process gives clients access to all departments within the organization, resulting in enormous transparency and accessibility but creating a complex complaint management framework as well. The situation is more difficult still, as its city buses are scrutinized and evaluated first at the municipal level, the Transit Authority level, and finally at the operating management level - in effect, DaimlerChrysler must please three customers for every product it sells, each with its own goals and contractual support for its interests. This discussion will explain how his company juggles, processes, and resolves its clients’ concerns, with a focus on:
- The challenges and rewards of a complex formal complaint management network
- Creating an ultra-efficient system for managing the concerns of three different clients for each product sold
- Complaint management as an enterprise-wide endeavour
- Using complaints from all three levels of clients to improve service levels
11:45-12:30 - HELPING EMPLOYEES LEARN HOW TO HANDLE COMPLAINTS
Cheryl Paradowski, President, Ontario Tourism Education Corporation
Your front-line staff’s ability to respond effectively and efficiently to a customer complaint is the backbone of your complaint management system, and the foundation of almost any successful CRM program. Statistics show that 98% of customers who complain will do business with the offending company again, so long as their complaints are handled effectively. Ms. Paradowski will discuss successful initiatives implemented in companies throughout Ontario’s tourism industry, and will explain how they can be transferred to nearly any industry or sector.
- OTEC’s five-step model for empowering front-line staff to solve problems early
- Applying the tourism industry’s model to all sectors
- The importance of coaching and follow-up
- Incorporating systemic support networks for optimal complaint resolution
12:30-1:30 – LUNCH
1:30-2:15 - ADAPTING YOUR CUSTOMER COMPLAINT RESOLUTION PROCESS TO FIT YOUR CUSTOMERS
Jean Lemyre, Senior Officer, Customer Relations, VIA Rail Canada
With growing customer expectations and the increasing variety and complexity of the different products and services on the market, organizations must tailor their complaint resolution strategies to fit their clientele in order to be successful. This presentation will focus on the different tactics and techniques used by VIA Rail Canada in not only resolving customer complaints, but equally importantly, in using the information gathered through this process to prevent recurrence and adapt its services where required.
- Empowering front-line personnel in the complaint resolution process
- Providing tools to address service shortfalls
- Recognizing your most valuable customers when adapting your resolution process
- Reviewing and sharing customer feedback at all levels of the resolution process
2:15-3:00 - CASE STUDY: MANAGING AND RESOLVING CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS AT BELL CANADA
Chantale Charbonneau, Regional Manager, Executive Care for Quebec and Ontario, Bell Canada
Complaints, quality and customer value are critical components to a successful organization. Using a "Connecting the Dots” methodology, Bell Canada recently combined its Voice of the Customer, Customer Value and Quality Monitoring Teams into one amalgamated team that works to implement best practices in its dealings with both internal and external customers. This session will discuss the methods and systems Bell uses to provide a unified customer experience, and will explain how best to drive improved productivity, provide a superior and consistent customer experience, and apply a best-in-class attitude while maintaining simplicity.
- How Bell Canada determines and maintains quality standards
- Collection of real-time actionable data through transactional and IVR surveys
- Accuracy-monitoring and complaint-tracking tools
- The “One Face to the Customer“ approach
- Employee “Cross-Training”
- The importance of a standardized process for registering customer complaints
- Resolving and tracking: enhanced customer complaint processes and reports
3:00-3:30 - NETWORKING BREAK
3:30-4:00 - HIGH TECH AND HIGH TOUCH: WORKING TOGETHER TO DRIVE COMPLAINT RESOLUTION
David Mee, Director, Customer Relations Branch, Shared Services Bureau, Government of Ontariobr>br>
Managing customer complaints effectively is critical to a company's ability to sustain market share, customer loyalty and integrity, and can also play a key role in improving product development. How do you build and then measure customer relationship management within an organization? How do you blend technology and people to provide effective service to your customers? What is the "balance" between "high tech" and "high touch" in customer relationship management? How do you measure success in customer issue resolution? Using case studies from the Government of Ontario's award-winning Ontario Shared Services, this discussion will help you to:
- Make complaint resolution a fundamental component of your Customer Relationship Management system
- Integrate your CRM system with day-to-day operations
- Seven key qualities of the "high touch" role
- Expand complaint management improvements by analyzing, reviewing and re-engineering
- How to measure "high touch" customer relations
- How to use service level agreements and service catalogues to establish customer relationships
- Explore complaint resolution strategies for senior management staff - particularly those that may not be IT savvy
4:00-4:30 - INEFFECTIVE COMPLAINT MANAGEMENT AS A BARRIER TO CUSTOMER LOYALTY
Vishnu Ramcharan, Manager of Hosts and Coordinator of Volunteers and Visitor Interaction Strategies, Ontario Science Centre
Why pay consultants when you can listen to your customer complaints for free? Developing a welcoming mindset towards the irritating and unreasonable can lead to excellence - and more business. Today the need is not for thicker organisational skins or more sophisticated shields, but for companies that strategically align their futures with those of their customers. This session will examine the Ontario Science Centre’s approach to complaint management, and will stimulate an analysis of the customer barriers that your organization may have built in its well-meaning attempts to court client loyalty.
- Measuring the impact of bad complaint management on your bottom line
- One step forward and two steps back: making sure your complaint management processes don’t do more harm than good
- Remaining receptive to complaints at all levels of your organization
- Angry customers as one of your most precious resources
- Deconstructing the complaint and determining its potential
- Making failure a good thing
4:30-5:00 - BUILDING BLOCKS FOR YOUR EFFECTIVE COMPLAINT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Lenna Bradburn, Director, Complaint Services, Ombudsman Ontario
Having an effective system for receiving and responding to complaints from clients, partners, and taxpayers is a vital part of doing business. Such systems allow for a concrete assessment of whether a given organization is meeting its standards, and provides insight into how to improve its products and services. This session will explore some of the elements that should be considered when creating a new complaint-handling process or undertaking a review of an existing process. Ms. Bradburn will discuss complaint management in the context of:
Best practices for building a complaint management system’s organizational structure
How to implement proven policies and procedures that produce results
Strategies for keeping your organization accountable
Assigning decision-making authority about commencing investigations and the type of resolution to be offered
Linking complaint management to other organizational activities such as training, discipline, collective agreements, research, environmental scanning and others
Conference Agenda:
Strategic Complaint Management - Introduction
Strategic Complaint Management Day 1
Strategic Complaint Management Day 2
Strategic Complaint Management Day 3 - Workshops
|