Find what recurring complaints are telling you

A recurring complaint deserves a broader question

When a customer reports the same problem again, the immediate responsibility is to help them. The business also has a second question to answer: why did the previous response fail to settle the issue?

That answer may sit outside the support conversation. The promised outcome may differ from the work assigned. A correction may cover only part of the affected service. Several customers may be encountering a shared condition that their separate requests do not reveal.

Our view is that repeated complaints are valuable evidence about how the business operates. They should inform the investigation of the underlying work, as well as the next reply.

Complaint handling should improve the business

The public overview of ISO 10002 includes analyzing and evaluating complaints as a way to improve products, services and customer service. It treats complaint handling as a process that should itself be reviewed and improved.

The practical implication is that a resolved conversation and an improved outcome need separate attention. A customer may accept an explanation while the original condition remains. A refund may settle one case while leaving other customers exposed to the same problem.

This does not diminish the value of a good response. It gives the response a place in a larger account of what changed, what was remedied and what still needs work.

Sources: [1]

Connect reports that describe the same underlying issue

Finding a pattern requires more than matching a phrase. Two customers can use the same words about unrelated problems. Several records can also repeat one report, giving a misleading impression of independent confirmation.

A stronger investigation connects each complaint to the affected service, agreement, work record and period of time. It checks whether the same requirement remains unmet and whether the previous action addressed that requirement. Separate customer reports can then corroborate a shared issue when their circumstances support the connection.

The answer should explain the reasoning in ordinary language. It should identify what the customers reported, which work was completed and why that work does or does not account for the reports. Where the evidence is incomplete, the next question should be specific enough for a responsible team to answer.

Investigate the conditions that allowed the problem to continue

Google’s guidance on blameless postmortems focuses on contributing causes and the information available to people at the time. The purpose is to improve the conditions in which people work, rather than turn the review into a search for someone to blame.

That approach is useful when a complaint passes between teams. The support team may have accurately recorded a response. The delivery team may have completed the task it received. The problem can still lie in how the customer’s requirement was translated into that task.

A connected record helps the business examine the handoff. It can distinguish work that was never assigned, work that was assigned but incomplete and work that was completed without resolving the reported issue. Each calls for a different response.

Sources: [2]

Define what evidence would establish improvement

Before closing the investigation, the team should know what would demonstrate that the underlying issue has changed. Depending on the problem, that could be a verified correction, a completed obligation or confirmation from the affected customer. Merely sending another reply is insufficient evidence by itself.

The business should also be able to follow the issue while it is being resolved. New reports, work updates and customer confirmations need to remain connected to the original finding, so progress is judged against the same requirement.

This is the value we want Orcinta to provide: an answer that brings the customer’s experience and the business’s work into the same view. The team can then address the cause with a clearer understanding of who is affected and what a successful resolution would mean.