The processing of customer complaints is often avoided. Through the principle of complaint ownership, management can ensure that responsibilities are always clarified and complaints are dealt with effectively. How do I implement this?
Complaint ownership aims to ensure that responsibility is always assigned to an employee of the company from the moment a complaint is received. The "ownership" of a complaint initially lands with the employee to whom the complaint was made. In case of doubt, this does not necessarily have to be a service employee.
Unfortunately, complaints are not necessarily always received by a company via the channels intended for this purpose. It can happen that expressions of dissatisfaction are only made to the trusted sales representative or another department, for example. An excellent Service mentality It is also important that this employee accepts the complaint and forwards it independently to the responsible department. After all, within the framework of the Service Excellencealways pursue a holistic service strategy that encompasses the entire company.
You can and should have a considerable influence on how your customers communicate with your company, especially in the event of a complaint. The main way to do this is by pointing out the channels through which the service can be reached at an early stage of the purchase. To publicize the services offered by your service department, you can use a variety of Customer touchpoints to fall back on.
Complaints processes should be known throughout the company
If you want every employee to feel responsible for the complaints of your existing customers, you need to make it as easy as possible for them. To do this, it should be clear who to contact if you are confronted with dissatisfied customers. This makes it easy for an employee to relinquish 'ownership' of a complaint by ensuring that the problem is dealt with and contacting the relevant department. In this way, complaint ownership does not become a time-consuming burden.
The best thing to do is to have one in your company. Complaint Manager (complaints manager). This way, you have a central point of contact in the company that everyone can turn to. In any case, your processes in the Complaints management but be standardized to such an extent that everyone knows at least roughly who takes care of which matters.
Service as a task for the entire company
In order to implement this guideline, some internal communication by the Service Manager required. They must ensure that other areas of the company are also familiar with the work of the service department and know how it can be made easier. This is not always easy, as employees from other areas have their own tasks that they are reluctant to neglect in order to deal with dissatisfied customers.
However, with a little insistence, you may be able to achieve a change in thinking at this point and get your colleagues on board. To do this, inform them about the benefits that result from increased customer satisfaction for the entire company and therefore also for other areas.
Advantages of the Complaint Ownership Mentality for smaller companies
Particularly in smaller companies, which may have a less developed service department, customers often do not know who to contact in the event of a problem. In this case, it is particularly important that at least every employee knows which department to contact in the event of a problem. Otherwise, customers quickly feel lost with their concerns, as the service department limits itself to the technical focus and refers them to the sales department, which in turn refers them back to the service department due to the nature of the query. Unfortunately, customers too often have to watch this ping-pong game powerlessly before escalating directly to the management.
If necessary, you can also allocate employees a certain budget with which they can resolve customer problems and restore satisfaction. However, such a strategy should be carefully considered in order to avoid wasting financial resources. Due to the risks involved, this type of approach is less common in industrial services.
Taking the initiative in the complaints process
The principle of Complaint Ownership can be part of a company's strategy. proactive customer service be. It ensures that the customer has the feeling that your company is interested in their concerns and will provide a quick remedy in an emergency. This means that problems reach your after-sales department at an early stage and do not grow into insurmountable hurdles.
The core idea of Complaint Ownership is that a customer does not have to take any further steps once they have expressed their dissatisfaction to an employee. Instead, the employee addressed ensures that the standardized complaint management processes get rolling. To do this, you also need to involve other departments in the service idea.
Implementing Complaint Ownership as a corporate philosophy
It is therefore clear that Complaint Ownership is not necessarily a complicated concept that requires the implementation of complex procedures. Rather, it is a philosophy that you, as a service manager, can promote within the company in order to achieve greater customer satisfaction.
To do this, you have to do something that many service managers are not very good at. This is because they are often recruited from the technical environment. This is why internal communication and strategy tasks do not always have top priority. However, be aware that as the head of a service department, it is also part of your job to represent the service department and its interests both externally and internally within the company.
So talk to your superiors and let them know that you are planning to introduce your idea of Complaint Ownership to your employees from other departments. Make sure that the idea spreads and that every employee in the company knows how to proceed in the event of a complaint and which department will take over. Spread the idea via internal communication channels such as the intranet and talk to the heads of other departments about it. Until every employee knows that customer complaints concern every employee and must not be left lying around.
