How Quality Assurance Processes Play a Crucial Role in Complaint Handling

Nearly 70% of businesses believe that customers are satisfied with their complaint handling, research shows. But only 26% of customers report that they are actually satisfied.

Clearly there’s a major disconnect somewhere. More businesses are seeking to improve their quality assurance (QA) processes to close the gap, putting in place the necessary checks and balances to boost customer satisfaction when it comes to complaint handling.

Boost Staff Development

Robust QA reveals where teams can improve, providing leaders with an accurate, real-time view of the performance of individual complaint handlers. This can flag any errors in complaint handling before complaints are escalated unnecessarily, preventing further customer dissatisfaction. It can also highlight any training needs for complaint handlers, underpinning a program of continuous improvement.

It’s a great way of onboarding new starters, too. For new employees, 100% of their work might be reviewed within a QA framework but as their work improves and the quality increases, the QA process begins to step away. Management intervention is wound down, becoming less intrusive as confidence in employees increases, alongside an increase in an employee’s confidence in their own ability. The process doesn’t end there, with ongoing QA highlighting where intervention needs to be ramped up again, reinforcing best practice and addressing identified training needs.

Fit-for-Purpose Solution

A good QA framework allows the business to assess whether employees have the right tools at their disposal. If complaint handlers don’t have access to the right information at the right time, this will show up in QA checks. It helps organizations to improve the use of their incumbent systems, highlighting gaps in system functionality and capabilities, and pinpointing where changes or updates need to be made.

Enhance Best Practices

The right QA processes will help to evolve operations, showing how certain complaint handling methods and tactics are leading to increased customer satisfaction levels. This then underpins the wider adoption of best practices across the organization, changing ways of working based on factual evidence and key metrics.

A solid QA framework gives decision makers a clear view of complaint handling performance from a customer’s point of view, not just in the present but historically, too. It might be that past cases are reviewed in line with current QA measures, helping to identify if certain policies have been unfairly or unreasonably applied to customers. While it may be too late to change the outcomes for those particular customers, the knowledge can be applied going forward, informing best practice and changing how complaints are handled for the better.

Robust QA can reshape the way an organization manages the complaint handling process in the long term, learning from mistakes and issues to establish a transparent complaints management function. The right QA processes can have an immediate positive effect on customer satisfaction levels. By improving outcomes and enhancing CX, QA has a major role to play in complaint management. It provides the insight and the oversight needed to build important long-term customer relationships, reinforcing a positive brand message and boosting that all-important repeat business.

Ready to see how our complaint handling software, Aptean Respond, can boost your company’s QA? Contact us today.