Complaints are your best friends

Taken from News and Comment from Roy Lilley from nhs.manager net

Roy's rules for handling complaints!

Listen, don't justify, sympathise, make notes, agree a course of action and follow through.

Listen: Say to the person with the complaint; 'I want you to tell me exactly what's wrong. I want to listen to you and find out'. Tell me, exactly what happened.

Don't justify; if you were plagued with staff sickness, the phones were down, the computers didn't work, the post was late... is of no interest to the person with the complaint. Focus on them. Justification will look like an excuse.

Sympathise: Saying; 'From what you tell me this must have been: very cross-making; painful; disappointing; distressing' - is not the same as admitting liability.

Make it clear you are making a note; 'I just want to make a note of all this so I can be sure I understand'. It's part of active-listening and demonstrates you are really interested.

Agree a course of action: 'I'll talk to the nurses/receptionist/ doctor and make sure it doesn't happen again/change it/fix it. Is that OK with you?' Or; 'I don't have all the details to deal with this and I'll look into it and ring you tonight... tomorrow... next week with the answer'.

And, the deal-maker/breaker; follow through. Do what you said you would do and tell 'em if you can't.

Complaints can be worrying, disruptive, vexatious, false, heartfelt and pride denting. Complaints are disturbing but not knowing and not dealing with them is business suicide. Making complaints a fulcrum point of change and a lever to doing what you do better is a no-brainer.

NHS and GP complaints on the rise

The number of complaints to the General Medical Council has jumped by nearly a quarter in a year. But the regulator says it is not a sign of falling standards. So what could be behind the increase? Read the full article here.

 

"Careless", "insincere" and "unclear" communication has fuelled a surge in complaints against the NHS in England, the health service ombudsman has said. In all, it received 16,333 complaints in the year 2011-12. Read the full article here

British Gas improves complaints data transparency

British Gas is announcing changes that will increase transparency around its complaints data, and is calling on all other energy suppliers to follow its lead as soon as possible. The aim is to ensure that customers can accurately compare levels of customer service between energy suppliers for the first time.

Energy suppliers are currently required to publish an annual customer complaints report on their websites by 31 October each year. However, there is currently no agreed format for complaints reporting in the energy retail sector, other than the total number of complaints that a supplier was unable to resolve on the same day or by the next working day.

In addition to reporting the number of complaints unresolved on the first or following day, British Gas is now publishing a quarterly update, which includes:

• Complaint volumes per 100,000 domestic energy customer accounts
• The percentage of complaints resolved on the same or next working day
• The percentage of complaints resolved within eight weeks
• The volume of complaints accepted by the Ombudsman Services: Energy

British Gas is also publishing the five main reasons customers have complained during the quarter, and has set out clear actions it is taking to tackle the issues behind those complaints.

British Gas is making changes to its complaints data reporting in response to research the company undertook*, which showed 90 per cent of customers want a simple, consistent method of comparing energy supplier complaints data.

Ian Peters, Managing Director of Residential Energy at British Gas, said:

“Energy customers want to be able to compare energy suppliers on service as well as price. Simple, easy to compare information helps customers make an informed choice about their energy supplier. British Gas has set out a clear way of reporting complaints data. We are calling on all energy suppliers to adopt the same standard so that customers can, for the first time, make a meaningful comparison of customer service levels.”

British Gas complaints data

Last year, there were nearly 22 million e-mails, letters and calls to British Gas from its customers. Of these, 319,234 were complaints from domestic energy customers that could not be resolved by the end of the next working day. More customers are now communicating with British Gas via e-mail and the web. This means it can take more than one day to conclude a conversation and resolve the complaint, but also means it is more convenient for customers.

Annual complaints reporting – 1 October 2011 to 30 September 2012
Number of complaints unresolved by end of next working day	319,234
Unresolved complaints by end of next working day per 100,000 energy accounts	2,033
% of customer accounts with an unresolved complaint**	2%

Commenting on British Gas’ total number of complaints that a supplier was unable to resolve on the same day or by the next working day Ian Peters, Managing Director of Residential Energy at British Gas, said:

“We want to resolve customer complaints as quickly as possible, but we believe it’s more important to investigate thoroughly, fix things at the first complaint and fix properly – without the need for further complaints – even if this takes us a little longer.

“That’s why we’ve started to do things differently this year, including communicating with more customers via email. Many customers find this more convenient. We are embracing this change, even though this means it sometimes now takes a little more time for the conversation to conclude. This change will inevitably be reflected in our current complaints data, but we are happy to put customer service first.”

Quarterly complaints reporting	Q2 2012	Q3 2012
Number of complaints we received per 100,000 energy accounts	2,249	2,064
Number of complaints we resolved per 100,000 energy accounts ***	2,271	2,062
The percentage of complaints we resolved on the same working day or next day	78%	79%
The percentage of complaints we resolved within eight weeks	96.5%	95.3%
Number of complaints accepted by the Ombudsman Services: Energy	208	221

The top five issues behind complaints in Q2 and Q3 this year from customers were: payment issues; billing; debt; metering; and customer service. British Gas has already been taking steps to address these concerns – for example, by introducing a new, clearer bill and through British Gas’ online EnergySmart toolkit. British Gas believes the key to significantly reducing complaints is ensuring actual, accurate bills through smart meters, and in this area British Gas is leading the industry with more 600,000 smart meters installed to date in its customers’ homes and businesses.

Whine-O-Whine: How to Cope With Chronic Complainers

Snappy article from the Wall Street Journel. Worth a read.

Latest figures from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS)

The Financial Ombudsman Service today releases its latest set of six-monthly complaints data relating to individual financial businesses – including banks, insurance companies and investment firms.

The data published today on the ombudsman's website covers consumer complaints handled by the ombudsman service between 1 January and 30 June 2012. The data includes both the number of complaints received about individual businesses and the percentage of complaints the ombudsman service upheld in favour of consumers.

During this six-month period, the ombudsman service received a total of 135,170 new complaints – a 27% increase on the previous period. 91% of the total number of cases came from 169 financial businesses (out of more than 100,000 businesses covered by the ombudsman).
Complaints about payment protection insurance (PPI) made up 63% of the total complaints received by the ombudsman during the first half of 2012 – with 85,562 new PPI complaints (compared to 49,419 in the last half of 2011). Five banking groups accounted for 71% of all new PPI cases received between 1 January and 30 June 2012. Across all businesses included in the data, the uphold rate for PPI complaints ranged from 5% to 98%.

In total the number of new complaints about each of the individual businesses ranged from 31 to 23,703. Five banking groups had more than 8,000 complaints each referred to the ombudsman service, together accounting for 80,235 cases – almost 60% of all new complaints in this six-month period.
Commenting on the complaint statistics released today, Natalie Ceeney, chief executive and chief ombudsman, said:

'The volume of PPI complaints doubled in the first half of 2012 – and has continued to increase since then with up to 1,500 new cases now arriving each day.We’ve also seen an increasing shift towards consumers doing it themselves rather than using a claims manager – with up to half of all new complaints now coming directly from consumers without paid-for representation, compared to less than 20% a year ago.This means our consumer front-line is busier than ever – taking over 3,000 calls on PPI a day and bringing much needed clarity to confused and bewildered consumers.'

 Taken from the FOS website

1.2 million enquiries to the Financial Ombudsman Service!!

How do you compare to this?

The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) averaged 5,000 enquiries a day in the 2011/12 financial year, totaling 1.2 million.

One in five – 264,375 – of the initial enquiries progressed to formal disputes, a record for the FOS and an increase of 28pc on the previous financial year.

Sixty per cent of the complaints to the FOS were about the sale of payment protection insurance (PPI). The 157,716 cases are the highest number of complaints to the Ombudsman about a single financial product.

Of the PPI complaints, seven of 10 were brought to the Ombudsman by claims companies, a tenth less than the previous year. The FOS said that this was due to consumers realising they do not need a third party to make a PPI claim.

All areas of the UK saw increases in the number of complaints, although the report identified Glasgow, Swansea and Bristol as "complaint hot spots".

The number of investment-related complaints fell by 4pc and banking complaints declined by 1pc – while insurance complaints other than PPI cases rose by 31pc.

The number of complaints against financial advisers fell from 3,092 to 2,643 for the 2011/2012 financial year. Financial advisers now represent just 1pc of all FOS complaints.

Natalie Ceeney, chief ombudsman, said about the report: "This year's been a struggle for many consumers, who have found themselves burdened by debt, besieged by claims companies and bewildered by the complexity of financial services. This has made our work at the ombudsman service more challenging – but more crucial – than ever before.

"I believe there's something we can all learn from what we've seen this year – to help prevent future problems and complaints. What's gone wrong in the past doesn't need to happen again – as long as we remember that "complaints" are about real people, not numbers, and that "complaints handling" is about customer service, not box ticking."

For those of us involved in complaints management / customer service, this is a message we are having to constantly reinforce.

Scottish Power - Contact Diary

Scottish Power has introduced a Contact diary that allows members of their Tell the Energy People programme to keep a record of all their contacts with the company.

They want customers to use the contact diary repeatedly, so that it will enable them to build up large catalogue of events and experiences from which they are better able to trace processes that aren’t working and training that needs to be improved.

They encourage customers to log all contacts and want to know how satisfied they are with the process.  For e.g. when somebody rings with a query or problem, when they send a letter, or when asked to provide a meter reading.

Hopefully if positive changes can come out of this, then it’s good to be good for customers. 

How to say 'No'

Another area I find interesting is how to say ‘NO’ the right way.  You get the hard ‘No’ and the service ‘No’.  The best way to achieve a service ‘No’ is the go through the following process of elimination:

Step 1	Say “yes”	Ask yourself, what stops you from saying ‘Yes’
Step 2	Do you fully understand the reasons why you can’t say “yes”	If your saying ‘No’, do you know the full reasons why(policy, process, resources etc)?
Step 3	Discretion	Any special mitigating circumstances?
Step 4	Any other way to help	Can we signpost the customer?
Step 5	Educate the client	Clear honest, logical explanation of why we can’t help.  Don’t use the words, 'unfortunately', 'sadly', or 'regrettably'.  Instead use the words 'however' or 'but'.

Responding to a complaint

On our complaints handling and investigation training, one of the areas of the training which people find most useful is preparing a response. This should not come as any surprise to those of us who work in the field.  Unless you are a natural writer, it's is hard to know where to start compiling a good response.  We provide a best practice template, which often gets incorporated into the procedure document.  Here below are some quick tips on responding to a complaint.

First ask yourself is a written response the best way to communicate?

Whilst in most cases you will have to do a written response, will the complainant find a conversation more valuable? If the complainant has language difficulties or your response is has complex / technical information, maybe a call before / after the response might help them understand.

The response

•  Thank them at the beginning to set the right tone.  For e.g., "Thank you for your complaint..." 
• Use the complainant’s words to summarise the complaint
• Tell them what you did in your investigation:
• What did you read?
• Who did you speak to?
• Do you need to make reference to policy and procedures?

Your deliberations and decision

• What happened?
• What should have happened?
• Do they match?
• Right of appeal

The essentials

• Use plain language 
• If you have to say 'No' did you use the service 'No'?
• If you were assertive, did you use the correct technique

There is so much else that could be said, but I'll leave you with these few hints!

  

The survival guide for dealing with chronic complainers

Well worth a read. 

The survival guide for dealing with chronic complainers

Energy Complaints – Which ? February 2012

Which? surveyed 8271 adults about their gas and electricity bills and experience of complaints to their energy supplier. Some of the key findings were:

40% had a problem with an energy supplier in the last 2 years

41% bottom customer score for Npower

4 million number of complaints recorded in a year by the major energy suppliers

A whopping 95% complaints upheld in favour of the customer by the Energy Ombudsman.

£125 average financial award from the Energy Ombudsman

£4 million potential compensation black hole

As the report goes onto suggest is this just the tip of the iceberg! The main problem area was billing including mistakes on bills, inaccurate meter readings or missing bills.

A quarter of those who had a problem with a supplier admitted they did nothing about the problems. Of those, 44% thought that complaining would make no difference; 28% felt the problem wasn’t serious enough; and 23% though it was too much hassle. For many of us that sounds all so familiar.

Of those who did complain, 12% abandoned their complaint and 8% switched suppliers entirely.

The Energy Ombudsman will look at complaints if the energy company has not resolved the issue within 8 weeks. Which? reveals nearly 57,000 complaints remained unresolved after 8 weeks. Given 95% of complaints are upheld and average payout is £125, that is a possible £4 million of unclaimed cash.

Another interesting and again a lesson for us all, is that 90% of unresolved complaints do not make it to the Ombudsman. This was put down to lack of communication from the energy suppliers about the existence of the Ombudsman and in the case of two energy companies, their published complaints procedure does not clearly state the ombudsman service is free.

Finally, the highest customer satisfaction rating of 84% went to Good Energy, who supplies renewable electricity, though the prices are about 25% more than the cheapest tariff on the market. Npower received the worst customer score of 41%, its complaints handling was rated 11 out of 12.

Full report in the February 2012 edition of Which?

The world of blogging and complaints training

It's time to encompass the world of blogging! 

How many organisations take seriously the issue of training?  When it comes to saving money, I'm hearing over and over again, our training budgets have been slashed.  Some say it will be two or three years before we look at training again.  And yet, a well trained workforce is sometime crucial to the very survival of the company / organisation. Staff value a company that is prepared to invest in them.

Complaints training is vital to help employees appreciate the value of complaints and give them confidence in dealing with them. In the decade I've been training in complaints, the amount of time I've seen delegates put on the feedback / evaluation form, all staff should be on the training.  This is because people value the knowledge and skills they have picked up and want others to have the same.  It's a shame that decision and budget makers don't attach the same value to training.

Comeback for more complaints training thoughts next week.