Free Complaint Handling Process

What is Complaint Handling?

Successful complaint handling means giving customers a forum to raise concerns and issues in a simple and meaningful way. Mistakes happen! The best way to deal with them is to resolve them and learn from them. Complaints are not about assigning blame or pointing the finger! Free complaint handling process article.

Addressing customer concerns can be a positive function within a business. When you understand how and why a complaint has been raised, you can use the outcomes for improvement and engagement.

Complaint Handling Guidance

Every business needs to have a process in place detailing how they handle customer complaints. The aim of this process is to provide a fair and consistent complaint procedure for customers to use. Reaching out to raise a concern must be simple, straightforward and fully accessible.

It is important that all employees within the company know about and understand the complaint handling procedures. Knowing what the process is and the reporting lines to follow means that all complaints are investigated fairly and in a timely manner.

For some industries, having a complaint handling process is a legal or regulatory requirement. In these instances, there are often specific timeframes and rules that must be adhered to by the company when dealing with a customer complaint.

Complaint Handling Process

You need to ensure that you have complaint procedures published on your website and accessible from links in emails so that customers can easily see and access them. If you correspond with customers via post, you should also detail your complaint process in writing or provide a link to the website page for further information.

Your complaint process should be simple and easy to use and detail what you will do once a complaint has been received. A generic complaint process may look like the below.

• Your complaint will be assigned to our Complaints Officer who will record your complaint on our case management system.
• Your complaint will be given a unique reference number and you will be sent a written or electronic acknowledgement to confirm your complaint has been received.
• The acknowledgement will detail how the complaint will be investigated and what timeframes we expect to meet.
• Your complaint will be reviewed and investigated.
• Where applicable, your complaint will be referred for further investigation to an expert on the subject matter and/or issues raised.
• You may be contacted to request clarification or additional information.
• Once we have concluded our investigation, you will be sent a final written response containing details of our investigation, the findings, outcomes and any actions taken as a direct result of your complaint.
• You will always be provided with details of who you can contact should you be unhappy with our final decision.

Complaint Response Letter Templates

To ensure that your response to each customer complaint is consistent, you can develop complaint letter templates. Much of the content within a response letter is the same for each customer, with only the issue and outcomes being unique.

It can therefore save you time and money if you have generic templates for each letter in place. The templates can be printed and posted or sent electronically via email or a customer portal.

Complaint letter templates include: –

• Complaint Acknowledgement Letter
• Informal Response Letter
• Investigation Holding Letter
• 4-Week Holding Letter
• Final Response to Upheld Complaint

Sample Complaint Holding Letter

From the Letter Suite Pack in the Complaint Handling Toolkit

Complaint Handling Template Toolkit

If you are looking for a compliant, professional complaint handling procedure suite of templates, we have just what you need! Our exclusive Complaint Handling Process Toolkit contains customisable policies, a complete customer letter suite, audit checklist, complaint log and customer complaint procedures.

With thousands of organisations already using our templates and toolkits, why reinvent the wheel! We are experts in policy development and template design, meaning your can focus on your business and expertise.