Effective Complaint Handling Part 8

• The Complaints Handling Process is a business critical component and as such needs to be validated through testing   This can be achieved through:
• Dummy complaints being followed through the process
• Mystery complainers who will have their experience documented and provide feedback
• Examining the level of knowledge of the process within the organization
• The process testing will be made more effective by:
• Process mapping the stages involved
• Identifying the critical points within the process
• Checking that they are functional under a range of conditions - both internal and external
• Making recommendations for improvement and implementing them in the process. This can be achieved through the PDCA cycle
• Auditing the Process:  check your process for
• Ownership / Responsibility are clearly defined
• Adherence to standards
• Completion of activity
• Implementation of findings
• Communication - both internally and externally
• The complaints handling process should be audited  This would allow:
• Problems to be highlighted
• Best practices to be praised
• Improvements to be suggested
• External validation of the process
• To audit the process you can:
• Question staff re: their knowledge of the procedure for handling complaints
• Review past complaints
• Document review
• Customer feedback
• The audit may be carried out by:
• Internal auditors who work in the organization
• Customers who wish to see how the process has been working
• Third party auditors who are auditing to check performance in terms of compliance with a recognized quality standard such as ISO9001

Until next time...






Sheryl Tuchman, SPHR, SHRM-SCP
http://tools2succeed.com/