Approaching Complaints

Complaints are an unfortunate fact of life, however what’s vitally important is for staff to handle dissatisfied customers appropriately and to try to understand the situation from their point of view and avoid escalating the issue by their intended or unintended interactions.

Being able to listen, respond and handle customer complaints confidently, be self-aware and maintaining a positive manner are all important skills, which, hand in hand with agreed principles, policies and procedures, ensure organisations can maintain their hard won positive reputations, whilst also listening and learning from comments received.

Evidence highlights that organisations which respond to complaints effectively enjoy an enhanced reputation with their customers.

Together with a NHS Hospital trust in the South East of England we developed our course by using real events to create various scenarios for the participants to work through in an interactive way.

By using actors to play the characters in each situation, the group is facilitated to learn from each other’s attempts to resolve the situations that they are presented with.