The Complaint Department

I recently heard of a colleague of mine that has one job at her agency--running the complaint department.  Oh sure, some clever administrator somewhere realized that he'd never be able to hire someone to run an actual "complaint department" so he dressed up the title a little bit and called this department the "Quality Assurance" department.  Wow! What a different feel to that department! Now instead of listening to complainers all day, you're goal is to assure that your agency is awesome!

Slow your roll. 

It's the same thing. 

Fielding complaints is a very necessary and valuable part of assuring that your agency is providing high quality service.  Naturally though, dealing with complaints is a tough aspect of an administrator's job.  I've been fielding complaints and dealing with the complaints for several years now and I've discovered some practices and strategies that have worked for me.

First and foremost, you have to realize what a complaint really is.  A complaint (albeit negative) is third-party feedback on your agency's performance.  Feedback is important for any business and it is so important so some that they pay people for their feedback through the use of surveys, focus groups, etc.  Feedback provides you with opportunities to train your staff, assure that your staff is performing up to your expectations and in rare cases, allows you to discover poor performing staff members so that you can coach, retrain, re-assign or fire. 

Secondly, you've got to know how to handle a complaint once it arrives.  For me, I typically ignore the occasional complaints here and there.  I look at it this way:  My favorite baseball team, the Texas Rangers, play 162 regular season games. If they have a stellar season, they'll win 90-100 of those games.  That means that they will lose 62-70 games.  By that thinking, no one overreacts when the team loses a game here and there.  No one freaks out when the ace pitcher has a bad outing or two each season.  It's a long season and you have to evaluate the entire body of work. 

I treat my staff the same way.  On an average month, my call specialists will talk to 1,500-2,000 individuals.  If they get one complaint out of 2,000 interactions, I'd say that they are doing a great job.  Wouldn't you?  When you receive a complaint, consider the whole body of work.  (Obviously, this does not include the staff member making an egregious error like the use of foul language, physical or sexual inappropriateness, etc.  I'm referring to simple complaints like "the girl had an attitude" or "I got hung up on.")

Each time I get a complaint, I do let the 'offending' staff member know.  Because of my previously stated stance on complaints, I don't levy any type of administrative repercussions on the staff member but it would be unfair of me not to let them know that a complaint was logged against them.  If you don't at least notify the staff member, you run the risk of alienating them if there turns out to be a trend of complaints against them.  You end up having this conversation:

"Hey Bill, we need to talk."

"Sure boss (no one actually calls me 'boss' but that would be pretty awesome) what's up?"

"Well, over the past few weeks, I've had several clients complain that you are not very engaged when you are trying to help them."

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize that I was being perceived like that.  How long has this been going on?"

"Two months."

"Two months?? Why didn't you tell me about this two months ago?  If I knew there was a problem, I could have rectified it by now!"

That's an unfair position to put a staff member in.  Always be upfront and honest with the 'offending' staff member even if you're not taking any administrative action on the complaint. 

Third, I look for trends in the complaints.  After I get the initial complaint and tell the 'offending' staff member about it, I will have to be cautious to note whether or not I get additional complaints similar to the first.  If I do, then we have a problem.  If you get multiple complaints from multiple sources over a relatively short time period, you have a trend on your hands.  At that point, you've got to be willing to take some sort of action. 

The action that you take varies based on the complaints.  Some complaints may simply require some additional coaching on your part.  Maybe the staff member just needs some encouragement and support to improve their job performance. 

You may find that you need to do some additional training or re-train the staff member. 

Sadly, if after you've tried to address the problem, and you still receive complaints, you may be forced to re-assign the staff member or relieve them of their duties. 

Long story short, don't be quick to overreact to a complaint BUT be willing to take action if you notice trends in complaints. 

What are some of the "best practices" that you've found in dealing with complaints?