case study 2

Practical steps to empowered complaint management Cook, Sarah; Macaulay, Steve . Managing Service Quality ; Bedford  Vol. 7, Iss. 1,  (1997): 39-42.

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ABSTRACT  

Many organizations are embracing the concept of empowerment, the devolution of responsibility and ownership

for decisions in the workplace. Considers how empowerment can lead to a positive approach to complaint

management which benefits both the customer and the organization. Gives an overview of empowered complaint

management with practical examples, maps out the steps to get started and discusses the challenges which

empowerment raises within the organization.

FULL TEXT  

Sarah Cook: Director of customer care specialists, The Stairway Consultancy, Blackheath, London, UK

Steve Macaulay: Management Consultant who has recently been appointed as Business Manager at Cranfield

School of Management, Bedfordshire, UK

More customers are complaining

In today's competitive market environment customers have high expectations of the goods and services they

receive. They are no longer prepared to put up with poor service without voicing their opinions. The Office of Fair

Trading reports an increase in the number of consumer complaints it received between 1985 and 1995 of nearly 50

per cent. A recent NOP consumer poll showed that 73 per cent of respondents had cause to complain over the last

12 months. Of these, 49 per cent had decided not to use the organization again and 40 per cent had recommended

friends or colleagues not to use the organization. Dissatisfied customers, therefore, are a powerful force in forming

and potentially damaging an organization's reputation.

Traditionally, many organizations have viewed complaints in a negative manner. Employees in these organizations

make the customer feel they have no right to complain. Barriers are put up which make it difficult for the customer

to receive a satisfactory resolution to their complaint. For example, heavy emphasis is put on warranties and

guarantees.

The customer and empowerment

As organizations recognize the benefits of "relationship marketing" and the value of retaining existing customers,

building relationships with the customer has become a key concern. Empowerment is now an accepted way of

doing business which has been shown to help organizations develop a customer focus.

Empowered service is readily visible to the customer. An empowered organization is one where employees are

given the authority and responsibility for serving the customer speedily and efficiently. The organization is centred

on the customer and is easy to do business with.

Organizations such as The Automobile Association, BUPA, WH Smith are now empowering employees to take

ownership and responsibility for the speedy resolution of complaints. The AA, for example, empowers its

employees to give the customer up to Pounds 100 to rectify problems on the spot.

Best practice complaint management

Best practice organizations have moved towards a far more supportive and positive approach to complaint

management (see Table I).

An example of "old" and "new" approaches to complaint handling is typified by changes to the customer services

function at tea-bag manufacturer Tetley. It used to site its customer relations department in a remote, run-down

building with poor information systems and a rather forbidding approach to customers. The department was

retitled customer services and became part of the marketing department. Complaints are now welcomed as a

means to rectify problems and plan for the future. For example, a case of counterfeiting tea-bags was spotted early

on thanks to rapid customer feedback.

Getting started - practical steps

The empowered complaint handler

An important element in the positive handling of complaints is the attitude and behaviour of employees. Service

providers who deal with dissatisfied customers need to :

- Have a customer-focused attitude and a positive "can do" attitude towards complaints.

- Demonstrate customer empathetic skills in dealing with complaints.

- Have a good knowledge of the company's products, systems and procedures.

- Know what level of authority they have to deal with complaints.

- Use the information they gain from complaints to promote continuous improvement so the company can take

action to overcome the causes of complaints.

The level of authority to deal with complaints

The starting point for empowered complaint management is making clear to members of staff what authority they

have to deal with complaints. It is no use saying, for example, that employees are empowered to deal with

complaints as they see fit. Managers need to be explicit about how far and what sorts of things this means.

In one pharmaceutical company the customer service manager has agreed with her team a framework for dealing

with complaints. Team members are empowered to use their discretion to appease unhappy customers to create

goodwill. The range of options they can take varies from a simple apology to a cash refund and the use of goodwill

items such as a free pen or a bunch of flowers.

In addition to providing a framework, employees need to be encouraged to use their authority. One car-hire

company, for example, had empowered and trained its service providers to deal with customer complaints.

Employees were told that they who were able refund small sums of money from a customer's bill as a goodwill

gesture if the customer had a justified complaint. In practice, although the branches received complaints, the

manager discovered that the goodwill gesture was not being made. Assurances had to be given to service

providers who felt reluctant and worried about their managers' reaction were they to use it.

Encouragement and support is a key element of the empowerment process and managers should not

underestimate its importance in reinforcing customer-orientated behaviours.

Training for empowerment

Providing training to service providers in the skills, attitudes and behaviours to deal positively and empathetically

with difficult situations is a key step in encouraging confidence in staff to be empowered.

Training should help employees to put themselves in the customer's shoes. For example employees are

encouraged to reflect on their experiences as a dissatisfied customer at a garage or a supermarket. A typical list

drawn up is :

(1) When a customer complains what they do not want is :

- to be ignored;

- to be made to feel guilty for complaining;

- to have to fight to get heard;

- excuses or justification;

- to be passed from one person to another;

- to have to wait a long time for their complaint to be resolved.

(2) What they do want is :

- sympathy and understanding of their complaint;

- quick action to resolve their complaint

- to be made to feel they are a valued; customer at all times, not just when they are complaining.

A well-trained and empowered member of staff can help turn a dissatisfied customer into an advocate of your

organization. We use realistic role play scenarios to train staff to feel skilled and confident in these areas :

- Listening to the customer - showing that the front-line employee understands the situation and that he or she

cares.

- Taking responsibility for the problem - not blaming other people or telling the customer to talk to someone else

even if the problem is not the fault of the service provider.

- Asking questions to establish the facts.

- Keeping calm - not returning aggression with aggression and not becoming defensive or justifying your position.

- Offering a variety of solutions to the customer so that they have a choice.

- Agreeing a solution which best suits the customer.

- Quickly following this action through to completion.

- Checking that the customer is satisfied.

Often the behaviour which people find most difficult to change is taking ownership for problems. We find that

these skills can be best applied by knowledgeable members of staff who can offer alternative solutions with

confidence. This means that empowered service providers also need to demonstrate a good knowledge of the

range of products and services the company offers as well as a thorough knowledge and internal systems and

procedures in order to help the customer.

Empowering employees to make improvements

Successful service organizations not only empower employees to deal with complaints, they encourage them to

use the information they receive to bring about improvements. This can often be achieved via the use of project or

cross-functional teams, for example:

- The customer handling team of a stationery company analysed their complaints and discovered a disturbing rise

in complaints from customers who ordered after 2 p.m. and expected delivery the next day. It appeared that

bottlenecks in the internal order processing system meant that these orders did not get processed to the following

morning and promises made to customers were not being fulfilled. The department set up a project team to

overcome the problem and now deliveries for all orders can be guaranteed to arrive by the next day.

- In another organization the customer services team were unhappy with the length of time the quality assurance

department took to respond to technical complaints. A team from the department undertook a benchmarking

study of best practice in other organizations. It worked with the quality assurance department to reduce the length

of time it took to resolve a complaint from 30 to three days.

Factors to be taken into account when implementing empowerment

There are costs and issues which are often raised during the process of empowerment. It is important you are

aware what they are.

- Complaint handlers are likely to need more multi-skilling. Many companies have found that there is a time and

cost factor involved in this. Best practice organizations have found too that a higher level of personnel working in

complaint management helps to speed the resolution of complaints. Many financial companies second employees

to their customer service departments from the field. This not only provides the department with experienced staff,

it also raises the awareness of the department among the salesforce.

- Information systems and communication need to be good. Birmingham Midshires Building Society has invested

heavily in communications to support its empowerment plan. Good communications starts at the top - the CEO

personally visits dissatisfied customers every month as a means to keep in touch with how the organization needs

to improve. It pledges that staff will always receive information before it is released externally. An internal monthly

newsletter is supplemented by weekly updates and daily news cuttings are widely distributed. In addition

information flow is encouraged by get-togethers, cross-functional meetings and the face-to-face programme of

regular executive branch visits.

- Care needs to be taken to ensure consistency. Some organizations establish this through all employees

identifying common values and performance standards and holding regular meetings to discuss customer issues

and how they are handled consistently. Computer software company, SCO, involved all service employees in

devising a mission and vision for their organization. The next step was to pinpoint values and behaviours which

underpinned their mission. Over a series of half-day workshops service values were identified such as sharing

knowledge, being flexible and helpful, appreciating and welcoming team success, accepting ownership for

problems. These were then codified into agreed performance standards to review jointly individual performance at

one-to-one and team meetings.

- Unless the underlying causes of complaints are tackled, complaints will keep reoccurring. This can have a

demoralizing effect on the service provider as well as ultimately causing customers to go elsewhere. There is a

need therefore to dig deep to tackle the underlying causes of problems. Best practice organizations recognize that

empowerment needs to go beyond the front line. Organizations such as GE involve a cross-section of employees in

identifying the root causes of problems. This often involves making improvements in organizational processes.

This approach helps prevent disillusionment in front-line staff as they and their colleagues know they are

empowered to eliminate problems.

- Managers may feel threatened that their authority is being undermined. In empowered organizations the manager

is no longer the source of all information, the person who and controls the work. Organizations such as Harvester

Restaurants are moving towards self-managing teams where the role of the manager is to act as facilitator and

coach.

The authors' experience is that this has led to some casualties and others only coming "on board" after counselling

and guidance. For example, when one hospital trust introduced a new complaint management procedure which

involved empowering front-line staff, managers' reaction was one of scepticism. They believed that the new

system would encourage patients to make more complaints and that it would not be possible to resolve many of

the issues raised. It was only after the new procedure had been in operation for six months that managers began

to view it in a more positive light. The system gave managers and staff an opportunity to quantify many issues

which they knew caused problems. It provided fresh impetus to work to resolve the underlying causes of problems.

Conclusions

The way customers are treated when they make a complaint will often make or break the relationship they have

with the organization. Empowerment is a powerful means of increasing customer satisfaction when resolving

customer complaints. For empowerment to be applied successfully, however, it must be promoted within a

framework which includes: encouraging service providers to take a positive and proactive approach to complaints;

developing service providers' skills in handling complaints; being explicit about the level of authority employees

have in complaint management; providing support and encouragement to employees in taking responsibility;

taking action to overcome the causes of complaints and generating ownership of the improvement opportunities

that complaints bring.

Once this framework is in place an empowered approach to customer service adds value not only to the customer

but also to organizational performance. Organizations wishing to improve the management of complaints should,

however, recognize that empowerment challenges traditional ways the organization and its people operate.

Illustration

Caption: Table I; Old-fashioned complaint management versus empowered approach

DETAILS

Subject: Complaints; Customer services; Decision making; Employee empowerment; Studies;

Management

Classification: 2400: Public relations; 2600: Management science/operations research; 6200:

Training &development; 9130: Experimental/theoretical

Publication title: Managing Service Quality; Bedford

Volume: 7

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Issue: 1

Pages: 39-42

Number of pages: 0

Publication year: 1997

Publication date: 1997

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Place of publication: Bedford

Country of publication: United Kingdom, Bedford

Publication subject: Business And Economics--Production Of Goods And Services

ISSN: 09604529

Source type: Scholarly Journals

Language of publication: English

Document type: Feature

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09604529710158292

ProQuest document ID: 198173072

Document URL: http://library.capella.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fdocvie

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Copyright: Copyright MCB UP Limited (MCB) 1997

Last updated: 2019-09-06

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