Achieving Service Excellence

About

With customer complaints costing airlines and the UK transport sector £5.51 billion annually, the Complaints Handling Toolkit (CHT) is designed to help companies to manage customer complaints in a way that is profitable, and can lead to service excellence. Grounded on rigorous academic research, the CHT is a comprehensive, easy-to-implement tool for managing a variety of customer-company experiences and touchpoints within individual service experiences.  The toolkit has been implemented across several service settings, including the hospitality service setting (airlines, hotels, restaurants).  The CHT supports service managers in addressing customer complaints at various stages of the service experience. In the airline context, the toolkit helps to manage customer complaints arising from unsatisfactory experiences occurring at different stages, including flight booking, online and desk-based flight check in, boarding, in-flight experience, and airport arrival. The toolkit is designed to: - allow a comprehensive assessment of existing customer service operations within the organisation - support the development of training programmes for customer-facing staff - improve customer experience - be practitioner orientated - be simple to use on an ongoing basis The approach to managing customer complaints is based on four complaint handling tools encapsulated in the matrix below: Tangible Resources                 |         Processes & Procedures Information Management        |        Interpersonal Treatment Tangible Resources Tangible resources represent a key element of complaint-handling. The toolkit helps companies to review tangible resources at their disposal, and how these can be employed across different types of customer-firm encounters.   Processes & Procedures Effective complaint-handling naturally requires the improvement of processes and procedures within the organisation. With the help of the toolkit, companies can review existing service processes and procedures, identify critical areas for improvement and innovate.   Information Management The mismanagement of information is often a major reason for customer dissatisfaction with complaint-handling. The toolkit can be used to identify areas in which key information is lacking within the organisation, in an effort to extrapolate such information and support staff employed in customer-facing roles. Interpersonal Treatment The interpersonal treatment rendered by employees during complaint-handling is crucially important. The toolkit helps to recognise the requisite for staff training and development, and to create training programmes that suit the business needs. The results from the adoption of the toolkit in managing customer complaints can be measured through a cost benefit analysis, and customer metrics such as customer satisfaction, recommendations, and repatronage intentions.  Where appropriate, the assessment can include KPIs related to the overall business strategy. The toolkit can be used on an ongoing basis as a benchmarking tool, and to spur service process innovation.