Developing an Effective Complaint Management System for Vendor Management

Podcast Transcript

Hi – my name is John with Venminder. 

In this 90-second podcast, you’re going to learn the fundamentals of how to develop an effective complaint management system.

At Venminder, we understand that complaint management is important; therefore, we’ve created our regulatory compliance and operational analysis to assist with complaint tracking.

Your customers will complain at times. How your organization manages and responds to complaints has become critical. It also will help spot issues with vendors.

To develop an effective complaint management program, your organization should have a policy establishing the complaint management program and procedures that should include, at a minimum, the following 8 elements:

1. First, log every complaint, with a date and time stamp, and the interaction your front line, also known as your business unit, had with anyone who has a complaint.
   
   
2. Second, you can use existing staff to assign a dedicated response team to handle complaints and their escalation.
   
   
3. Third, require aggressive action and timeframes to resolve every complaint.
   
   
4. Fourth, acknowledge, respond and resolve every complaint in writing.
   
   
5. Fifth, empower your front line. Make them your eyes and ears and educate them on how your organization wants complaints handled.
   
   
6. Sixth, set time aside to discuss what feedback you’re receiving. Implement call center, snail mail and social media monitoring. You may wish to consider setting up a social media watchdog.
   
   
7. Seventh, check websites such as the CFPB’s complaint database, Google News and ripoffreport.com in order to scan for customer complaints.
   
   
8. Finally, have quarterly business reviews with your third parties who are customer facing to address any issues or concerns.

Remember to make complaint management part of your contract with third parties and to always develop clear guidelines as to who and how you expect your third party vendors to handle the complaints.

I hope you found this podcast helpful.

Thanks for tuning in; catch you next time!