Author’s Title / Customer Services Manager
Are there background papers? / Yes / No
Exempt / Yes / No
Reason for Exemption?
Key Decision? / Yes / No
If Key Decision is it on the Forward Plan? / Yes / No
Decision for Full Council? / Yes / No
Ward(s) affected? / All
Responsible Cabinet Member name / Graham Jones
Contact Officer / Rebecca Moore
Jane Wisson
E-mail address /
Telephone number / 01263 516096
Are there Non Electronic Appendices? / Yes / No
List of Background Papers
File Location: / Customer Services/L Drive
PLEASE REFER TO SECTION 7 OF THE GUIDANCE NOTES FOR TEMPLATES
Implications / Risks:Have you identified & explained within the report the implications of the options available to members?
(Implications should include financial, legal and links to the Council’s existing policies and strategies) / Yes / None
Have you highlighted the Risks to the Council?
1.1.Financial Implications and Risks to the Council should have their own separate headings. It is not acceptable to simply state that financial implications or risks have been alluded to in the main body of the report.
/ Yes / NoneThis report has been subject to the following processes:
Consultations with:Cabinet Member / Yes / If not please state reason below
Local Member / Yes / If not please state reason below
S151 Officer / Yes / If not please state reason below
Has been seen by 3TG
Monitoring Officer / Yes / If not please state reason below
Democratic Services Manager / Yes / If not please state reason below
Communications Manager / Yes / If not please state reason below
Other Head(s) of Service:
Others: / Complaints co-ordinators
Please confirm this report has been signed off by:
Management Team / Yes / Not apt
Relevant Strategic Director / Yes / Not apt
The Chief Executive / Yes / Not apt
Agenda Item No____8______
New Customer Complaints, Compliments and Suggestions Handling Procedure
Summary: /
This report provides the Committee with a proposed new Corporate Customer Complaints, Compliments and Suggestions process.
Conclusions: / To prepare this authority in its endeavours to obtain the cabinet standard in Customer Excellence it has been recognised that the existing complaints procedure needed reviewing. This report includes a handbook with the new procedure in complaints handling which complies with the cabinet office standards requirements and utilises aspects of the best practice identified from Charter Mark authorities.Recommendations: / The Committee supports the new corporate approach to handling Customer Complaints, Compliments and Suggestions process, by adopting the recommendations contained within this report.
The Committee supports and adopts the Corporate definition of what is a complaint, the changes to and aspirations in timescales for responding to complaints and the need to use suggestions and observations to develop an ethos of continuous improvements.
Cabinet member(s):
Graham Jones / Ward(s) affected:
All
Contact Officer, telephone number, and email: / Rebecca Moore, Customer Services Manager. 01263 516096,
Jane Wisson, Customer Services Team Leader, 01263 516096,
1. Objectives
1.1The corporate management team and Council members have requested a review and update of the complaints procedure; the existing procedure has been shown to be ineffective and inconsistent in some areas of the authority.
1.2In addition, the scope of the review and report has been extended to include compliments, suggestions and observations made by our customers.
2. Rationale
2.1The documentation is out of date and difficult to understand, with the result that staff don’t fully understand the current system; many are even unaware that a corporate complaints system process exists.
2.2Currently the complaints process is maintained by individual services and is held in various formats, implementing various timescales and within various software packages.
2.3Many areas fail to identify recurring trends, or make the necessary service improvements, as the information is rarely or never reviewed.
2.4It is becoming increasingly apparent that the current complaints procedure is not universally or consistently followed. Each section has differing response targets and a variety (if any) of forms of complaints logs. As an organisation, we do not appear to have recognised that suggestions, observations and complaints from the public are a valuable and free mechanism of feedback. All are a way of identifying areas that need improving and present us with an early chance to put things right and strengthen public support for us as a local authority
2.5 The new Cabinet Office Customer Service Standard (which is now replacing the Charter Mark) has identified that, as part of the Delivery Criterion (4), the handling of complaints is a vital aspect of an organisation’s ability to successfully deliver and achieve its main business aims, deal effectively with problems and deliver solutions that reflect best practice and contribute to continuous improvement.
3. Background Information and Context
3.1 The British Standards Institute publishes international standards which set down guidelines for complaint handling in organisations and can be taken as a starting point to establish and assess best practice.
The standard has nine principles which it recommends for the effective handling of complaints:
- Visibility
- Accessibility
- Responsiveness
- Objectivity
- Customer focused approach
- Accountability (within the organisation)
- Confidentiality
- Continual Improvement
- No charges for complaint handling (more relevant to the private sector)
3.2 The Local Government Ombudsman provides a booklet on good practice in complaints handling and some of these areas need to be incorporated in the policy and procedures that we establish.
4. Recommendations
Having reviewed the current procedures, it is recommended that:
4.1A corporate definition of what constitutes a complaint should be agreed and adopted by the Council. This would need to be disseminated and published both internally and externally.
It is proposed that the following definition is adopted:
“A complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction by one or more members of the public about the council’s action (or lack of action) or about the standard of service, regardless of whether the action was taken. This includes standards of service provided by the council itself or by a person or body acting on behalf of the council.”
We need to make it clear that it does not apply to requests for service, or to dissatisfaction with any other bodies, or internal complaints or grievances.
A corporate definition of what constitutes a compliment should similarly be agreed and adopted by the Council.
“A compliment is an expression of praise for an action completed or a standard of service delivered”.
4.2A review of the timescales for responding to complaints, acknowledgement of letters and resolutions is completed. Any amendments should be adopted corporately and disseminated accordingly. This should also tie in with the requirements of the Cabinet Office standard.
Consideration needs to be given to setting minimum performance standards and aspirational targets as part of the wider customer services standards.
The current performance target should represent the minimum standard as follows:
Acknowledgement to be sent within 3 working days
Full response to be sent within 28 days
An aspirational target should be set and should be challenging but realistic. Our aspirational target is:
- 24 hours to acknowledge receipt if received via email
- Two working days to acknowledge receipt if received via letter, in person or over the telephone.
- Some complaints necessarily take longer to deal with than others, and so incases like this where the time target can not be met, the complainant will be told why.
All investigations should be completed within 10 working days with a written response to the complainant within 15 working days. This is a stretching target that would achieve cabinet office standard 4.3.2, which states:
“We have an easy to use complaints procedure, which includes a commitment to deal with problems fully and solve them wherever possible within a reasonable time limit. Customer complaints procedure as provided for use by customers.”
We will actively work towards achieving this aspirational target with the aim to be consistently achieving this by April 2010.
4.3We establish a way of capturing suggestions and observations for review, which will enable the organisation to put things right and enable continuous improvement before it reaches the level of a complaint.
Customer Services will implement a contact management system in line with corporate policy. This system will make capture of suggestions, observations and complaints a lot simpler, user friendly and provide the ability to easily report and provide trend analysis. This will require training for all complaints and compliments coordinators.
4.4“Complaints coordinators” be identified and their names published internally. This list will need to be constantly reviewed and maintained by Complaints Champion.
4.5A member of staff within Customer Services is designated as “Complaints Champion” to act as a conduit through the organisation to:
- Review and report on compliance of the process and timescales
- Provide and annual review
- Implement a trend analysis and complete on a month by month basis
This officer is not responsible for delivering the solution to the problem/issue; this is the responsibility of the Service Manager (or a designated officer).
The Complaints Champion can act as a coordinator. For example, when a letter contains more than one issue, the Officer can amalgamate the responses to ensure that the customer only has one response and one point of contact, which takes overall responsibility for the customer’s problem.
The Complaints Champion must have the support of the Corporate Management Team to challenge staff who do not comply with the established system, set and amend targets/standards as appropriate, get improvements made and ensure that the system is being adequately resourced.
This Champion and/or Customer Service Manager can also be called upon by Customer Service Advisors when dealing with complainants, either face-to-face or on the telephone, if service area staff are unavailable.
The Complaints Champion would take responsibility for ensuring that the procedures and processes in place are reviewed to ensure that we are continually improving our service and adhering to the defined standards. Regular reports will be provided to individual service areas on a monthly basis and to the relevant Director and members on a quarterly basis.
4.6The attached proposed complaints procedure that has been developed is reviewed annually and appropriately amended.
It is an amalgamation of an existing procedure provided by an “excellent” council, with additions suggested by interviews held with NNDC staff. It will also need to go out for consultation with members and 3TG officers as a viable methodology to incorporate within our day to day operational needs.
Further materials need to be developed, including a leaflet be provided in all relevant formats to ensure that we comply with all our aspirations in respect of equality and diversity, along with a form to complete if and when making a complaint.
4.7This change needs to become embedded within our operational culture and, to ensure this, we also need to identify and provide sufficient training to Complaints officers and all staff.
4.8It is recognised that once implemented, the statistics for reporting purposes will increase until it becomes embedded into the organisation by continuous improvements to services from the results.
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