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Investigating complaints

Investigating complaints

When your business receives a complaint, you need to determine what action is needed to move the situation forward. For many complaints, this involves taking it to the investigation stage, which enables you to learn more about what happened and why, and to decide how it should be resolved.

This module explains what the investigation process for complaints typically entails.

You will understand what steps are required to learn everything you need to send complainants a response and to ultimately reach a resolution.

It also emphasizes the importance of communicating regularly with complainants during the investigation process and looks at what to do if complainants contact you too frequently while you investigate.

Topics to be covered

When is investigation required?

Carrying out investigations

Informing the customer

Stages of investigation: clarification, assessment, conclusion Communication

When is investigation required?

  • To determine whether or not an investigation is required, you should consider a variety of factors:

  • How serious are the issues raised by the complainant? Do they involve misconduct, health and safety violations, injury or ill health, harassment, discrimination, fraud, or corrupt behavior?

  • Does the issue indicate a problem with a business policy, procedure, or practice?

  • Does the complaint suggest staff misconduct or abuse of their position?

  • Is the complaint about a sensitive or personal issue? Is the complaint connected to past complaints: are they all regarding the same issue and/or person?

  • How many staff members are potentially involved?

  • How much time has passed since the incident that the complaint is about occurred?

  • What impact could the complaint have on the business?

  • Is it viable in terms of time and resources to investigate the issue, relative to the severity of the complaint?

Determining these facts is also essential for helping you plan your investigation.

When you know exactly what sort of complaints you are dealing with, you are well-positioned to keep the investigation focused and manageable.

For instance, if you have determined who is involved, you can plan a schedule for getting in touch with these people at convenient times.

Similarly, if you determine that the issue is connected to a series of complaints made in the past that have yet to be resolved, you can save yourself a lot of trouble finding information, you can potentially solve more than one complaint at once.

Carrying out investigations

You should aim to follow these time frames during an investigation:

  • acknowledge the complainant within three business days of receiving the complaint. Ideally, you will respond within 1 to 2 days or much sooner if the complaint is made by social media.

  • Provides complainants with an update on the situation at least once a week or immediately if major progress is made.

  • Provide a full response to the complaint within 20 working days.

In some cases, these time frames will be difficult to meet for instance, if the investigation requires people who are unable to help due to absence.

If the investigation requires an extension, make it very clear to the complainant why.

In order to keep an investigation fair and efficient, there are a few things you should keep in mind:

  • Always conduct the investigation free of bias: you must be impartial and objective.

  • Maintain confidentiality as much as possible.

  • Store any information about the complainant securely, in accordance with the data protection act.

  • Don’t discuss the complaint, except your immediate manager. Only discuss it with those who were involved when you need to gather information.

  • Don’t promise the complainant that you will sort the issue out. You don’t know enough until you complete your investigation so you may not be able to keep to this promise.

If you determine that the complaint may lead to legal proceedings, take extra care to maintain confidentiality and security when gathering and recording evidence.

If the investigator has direct involvement with the complainant or the subject of the complaint for instance, they have a personal or financial connection someone else must take over.

Where the complaint concerns criminal activity, corruption or a very senior manager of the company for example a CEO, it may be above your level of expertise and require immediate referral to external handling.

The body that you refer the complaint to depends on the type of complaint and the sector in which your business is based, which means you may need to seek expert advice.

Determining who needs to deal with the complaint before starting the investigation is essential to ensure impartiality and to prevent waste of time and resources.

 

Informing the customer

If there’s any doubt about what’s required, you will need to do some preliminary investigations or communicate with senior staff.

In some cases, this might not be possible right away, meaning you and the complainant have to wait.

During this time, it’s essential that you do not leave the complainant in the dark. The longer they have to wait to be acknowledged and receive an initial response about what you intend to do, the more frustrated and less trusting they become.

Even if you don’t know what action will be taken just yet, you still need to notify the complainant that you are going to investigate the situation. Doing so is especially important for complaints made via email or social media, as the complainant might otherwise feel ignored.

Once you’ve acknowledged the customer, you can start investigating.

Stages of investigation

There are three key stages to an investigation:

  • Clarification-determining all the facts about the situation that led to the complaint.

  • Assessment-figuring our the room of the problem and whether or not the complaint is valid.

  • Conclusion-preparing to notify the complainant about the decision you have reached and implementing changes that prevent the issue in the future.

Additional or fewer steps may be required depending on the complexity of the complaint, but generally you will follows these three stages to obtain all the information you need to respond appropriately.

Let’s look at what each stage may involve in more detail.

Clarification

Talk directly with the complainant to get further information.

If you do so in person, make sure you take them to a private area where they feel comfortable discussing the issue. Remember to use open questions which may start with who, how, what, and where.

Consider a translator is the complainants first language isn’t English or have someone supporting them if they have a disability that affects their communication.

If the complaint is serious enough that it could reach legal proceedings, consider the need for a recording or transcript of the conversation.

Evaluate data

Check phone calls, emails, reports, noted, documents, surveillance footage, and any other information related to the complaint. Be sure to store this date securely.

Speak with others who were involved or present.

Talk to staff, suppliers, Menander of the public, and anyone else who witnessed or was part of the incident.

Ask them what led to the situation, what they did, what they said and how they interacted with the complainant. Use open questions and actively listen. Always let people explain in their own words what they believe led to the problem.

As before, consider providing support to anyone who requires it for communication and consider the need for recording or transcribing testimonies.

Assessment

After collection data about what happened; it’s time to figure out the root cause of the concern-doing so is your primary aim during this assessment stage.

For instance, a manufacturing or system fault may be due to poor Organisation of operations, while human error or unusual staff behavior could be caused by stressful working conditions or a lack of training.

You also want to determine where or not the issue is recurrent it has the potential to happen again if not corrected. Doing this also enables you to address any complaints that are related and recurrent and have yet to be resolved.

During the assessment stage, you may:

Review business policies, procedures and practices Contact suppliers or other departments Check training records Investigate staff suspected of misconduct and/or have a discussion with them. You may need to seek about input or refer the case to an external body Carry our site inspections-investigate the location that is the cause of the complaint Examine past complaints Seek expert input

After a thorough assessment; you should be able to narrow down the core cause of concern.

Communication

Research shows that around 75% of customers will do business with you again if their complaint is handled effectively, and this includes how well you communicate with them during the handling process.

Many businesses receive more complaints about the complaint handling procedure than anything else. The complaints are usually about how the person needed to chase the business up about their issue.

So, as mentioned earlier, update the complainant at least once a week. Information about process is important, but the complainant mainly wants to know what you haven’t forgotten about them.

If at any stage during the investigation process the complainant contacts you for an update, and we them as soon as possible and to the best of your abilities. Reassure them you are investigating the situation and will get in Touch if they are noteworthy updates.

Regular, clear communication is key to beholding trust.

Receiving occasional requests for an update from complainants is completely reasonable and to be expected, especially for complaints that take time to investigate, but sometimes complainants May contact you to frequently. This hinders your ability to investigate their complaint, meaning they are demanding an unfair proportion of your time and resources.

Communication with people of this nature can be tricky. You don’t want to upset the complainant by ignoring them or telling them to stop contacting you, but also you don’t want to waste your time and energy drafting resounded it being held up in the phone or in person potentially several times a week.

In this situation, you need to be patient and understanding, yet firm.

Make it clear to the complainant that such frequent contact is not helpful to the progress of the complaint.

Explain that it slows down your investigation and stops you from dedicating your full concentration to it. Tell them that you will be in touch if anything changes, so they don’t need to worry.

Lastly, state that they should only contact you if they have any additional information regarding the complaint or if they don’t hear from you for over a week.

If they persist, you may need to warn them that, while this is not your preferred course of action, you will have to hand up, Ignore, or block them temporarily. If in person, they may need to be ignored by staff or removed from the premises in a worst case scenario.

Only block contact with the complainant as a last resort and with senior approval.

Conclusion

At the conclusion stage of your investigation you should have enough evidence to:

Validate the complaint by explaining to the complainant what happened and why

Determine how the business will provide the customer with recompense for the problem they faced

Establish what the business needs to do to revolve the root issue

You’re now prepared to enter the final stage of handling the complaint, which involved informing the consonant of your decision and acting on intending changes.

The first thing you should do is contact the complainant.

Your response should be in email and/or writing and should be written in a formal tone.

If your investigation was short, meaning this is the first response you’ve provided the complainant, remember to thank them for bringing the issue to your attention, as well as apologizing for the fact they have needed to complain.

If you already have an ongoing dialogue with them, your response can get straight into explaining what decision you’ve reached and how.

Your reply should:

  • State what the letter is regarding I.e paraphrase the complaint.
  • Where relevant, apologies for any delays in the investigation

  • Explain how you’ve investigated the matter, mention briefly what evidence you’ve reviewed

  • State what you have determined the root cause of the issue to be and how it led to the situation the compliant faced

  • Detail how the business is going to rectify the issue as a whole

  • Apologize for the matter, explain how you intent to compensate or rectify the matter for the complainant

  • Invite the complainant to reply with any queries they have regarding your decision

  • State which external Organisation they can contact if they have unsatisfied with the business’s decision

An example:

Dear Mrs Scott,

I’m writing to you regarding your complaint about the way I member of staff treated you on 12 July 2017.

We have investigated the matter by discussing the individuals behavior around other service uses and staff, by assessing past records, and by having a formal discussion with the individual. It has been decided that their behavior was unacceptable. Their actions are not in keeping with our attitudes and values, whereby service users should always be treated with respect and empathy.

Therefore, we have agreed to temporarily move them to a role that does not involve interacting with members of the public while they undergo training and supervision to improve their behavior.

We are sorry you experienced this treatment and can assure you we will provide better customer care in future. We have already reassigned you a carer who we trust will treat you respectfully and support your needs. Please see enclosed for further details. If you have any questions regarding our investigation and final decision, please feel free to get in touch with our team.

If you determine that the complaint is unsubstantiated, you could write:

Dear Mr Clifton,

I’m writing to you regarding your complaint about your banking account and recent financial transactions.

We have investigated the matter by speaking with the account manager who set up and oversees your account and by reviewing our business policies and terms of services.

Unfortunately, we have determined that when you set up your account with our team, you agreed to a set of terms that stated these payments would leave your account at set dates. Our team members assure us they explained the conditions to you clearly and encouraged you to read them. Furthermore, the contract you signed upon opening an account with us clearly stipulates these terms.

Therefore, we will not be able to take your complaint any further. However, we are happy for you to get in touch if you have any questions regarding our investigation and final decision.

Assuming all goes well, and the customer is satisfied with your response, you are ready to implement the intended changes and provide the customer with suitable recompense. Make sure these actions are made and you keep a record of them.

Implementing changes and providing compensation might be the duty of a different team member or senior staff, as you may only be in charge of investigating complaints and contacting people. Keep in touch with whoever is in charge of changes and ensure it gets done.

Also keep in contact with the complainant if they have yet to receive recompense. They might have an opportunity to complain further if you promise something that you do not deliver.

Remember: if A complainant is unsatisfied with your business’s decision, you should give them contact information for an organization that provides external handling, such as ombudsman services.

A customer can take a complaint to the ombudsman services if the organization that the complaints is about is signed up to ombudsman service schemes.

If a complaint is about the NHS or certain other public services, the complainant can take it to the parliamentary and health service ombudsman.

If the issue is regarding a financial provider, customers can contact the financial ombudsman.

Once the complaint handling process is complete, file away all records in a secure location. Your records should state:

The complainants name and contact details Nature of the complaint The form in which the complaint was received The aspects of the business complaint refers to Date the complaint was made and when the situation occurred If and when the complaint was escalated to an investigation If and when the complaint was escalated to external handling Details of the investigation process Details about the root cause of the complaint What remedial action was taken and by whom The date the complaint was closed Details of the investigator and anyone else involved

Exercise

Take a look at the scenario below and then answer the question on the following slide:

You are a complaint handler for a roofing company that hires out contractors to various homes throughout the city.

You recently received a complaint from a disgruntled customer about how a contractor, who was meant to come look at their roof at 2:30 on a Thursday afternoon, showed up 2 1/2 hours late. The customer waited in after being continuously reassured by the customer service team that the contractor was on their way.

The customer always complained that the contractor was unfriendly and didn’t communicate much.

They emphasized that they had to take a day off work and, due to how long they had to sit in for the contractor, had to arrange for someone else to pick up their daughter from school.

What three things might you do to investigate?

Check details of the contract

Assess the cost of your service

Review business policies

Interview the contractor

Summary

In this module you have learnt

  • Clarification involves determining all the facts about the situation that led to the complaint. You may need to talk directly with the complainant, evaluate data, and speak to others who were involved or witnessed the events that took place.

  • The assessment determines the root cause of the problem. Doing so may involve reviewing business policies, procedures, and practices, checking training records, investigating staff suspected of misconduct, and examining past complaints.

  • At the conclusion stage, you should be ready to validate the complaint, provide Recompense, and resolve the core issue. Before officially closing the complaint, store records in a secure location.