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| Customer Complaint Handling Introduction | | | |
It is hard to imagine a customer transaction not vulnerable to problems
and complaints, be it buying groceries, connecting to cable service, purchasing
a car or having a home repair done. Nor is it hard to see why
businesses benefit from making concerted efforts to prevent and
respond to customer complaints.
Research shows, in fact, that companies attract and keep customers when
they follow customer service standards and policies that prevent problems
from arising, and are honest, fair and responsive when things go wrong.
Customer complaint management (CCM) encompasses techniques,
processes and systems that lessen the chance of customers having problems
and allow businesses to respond fairly, efficiently and effectively
when complaints arise.
Although many firms and industry sectors already carry out some
form of customer complaints management, surveys suggest that many
Canadian customers are not satisfied with how businesses respond to
customer problems.
The immediate objective of this Guide is to increase awareness among
businesses, customer organizations and governments of existing Customer Compliant Management
initiatives, and to provide suggestions for developing effective programs.
The long-term objective is to improve business practices in the marketplace
by providing practical information about responsive Customer Compliant Management initiatives
that can serve as benchmarks for effective complaints management.
It is clear that individual firms and industry associations are usually in a
leadership position in creating good market-based complaints management
initiatives. But customer organizations can also take the lead in
developing such initiatives and help industry with its work in this area.
For governments, effective Customer Compliant Management initiatives increase the likelihood that
customer problems will be resolved at the source, allowing governments
to concentrate their efforts on “bad actors.”
The Guide discusses Customer Compliant Management initiatives developed by individual firms
as well as sector-wide programs, in both the conventional and online
marketplaces. Rather than providing a comprehensive digest of Customer Compliant Management initiatives and being a detailed how-to manual, the Guide is designed to
be a point of departure.
The first part of the Guide describes various types of Customer Compliant Management initiatives,
provides examples of these initiatives, and discusses their strengths,
weaknesses and other characteristics, and the conditions in which they
are successful. The second part of the Guide outlines eight steps for developing
and implementing effective complaints management initiatives.
The Guide is the culmination of research and consultation to prepare case
studies of existing complaints management initiatives and research
papers, as well as a workshop that discussed the findings in these papers.
To keep the Guide as concise as possible, only brief references are made to
the underlying research.
Readers should not interpret the mention of any particular Customer Compliant Management initiative as endorsement of the firms or initiatives by federal,
provincial or territorial governments, or by those who prepared
the Guide.
Summary
Introduction
Market-based Customer Complaints Handling Initiatives
Preventive Customer Complaint Handling Initiatives
Internal Complaints Handling Initiatives
External Private Dispute Resolution Initiatives
Comprehensive Complaints Handling Systems
Characteristics of Effective Online Trustmark Programs
Online Redress
The Need for Effective Customer Complaint Handling Initiatives
Customer Complaint Handling Initiatives and the Law
Developing and Implementing Complaint Handling Initiatives
Elements of Successful Customer Complaint Handling Initiatives
Where Can I Get More Help?
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