Best-practice complaint management

Executive Summary This article reports the findings of the second phase of an ongoing research project into complaint management. The research was carried out in association with the Customer Service Network in the UK. The objective of this exploratory article is to discover what constitutes best-practice complaint management. The research took a grounded-theory approach based on rich case studies of the five outstanding United Kingdom service organizations identified in an earlier study. These organizations were a mix of public and private organizations and included a not-for-profit private health insurance company, a telephone banking operation, a chamber of commerce, a general hospital, and a High Street bank. As a result of the cross-case analysis, twelve insights into best complaint-management practice were identified including the need not only for speed of resolution but also a human touch, the need for closure not just follow-ups, top-level involvement in complaints, the strategic use of complaints, a combination of decentralized and centralized tasks, and parallel systems for staff suggestions/complaints.