Editor’s note: Quality Digest will present Richard DeRisio’s webinar, “Effective Strategies for Complaint Handling” on May 19, 2015, at 2 p.m. Eastern, 11 a.m. Pacific. DeRisio will be a guest on Quality Digest Live on Friday, May 15, also at 2 p.m. Eastern, 11 a.m. Pacific, to preview the webinar.
In some industries, the management of customer complaints is highly regulated, usually because of the importance of detecting health- and safety‑related issues that are occurring in the field. Unfortunately, although companies are sensitive to reports of serious performance issues, they otherwise view complaint reports as a quality management headache and compliance nightmare.
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Companies that “get it,” that understand that the voice of the customer is identifying opportunities for improvement, are taking advantage of the experience of those who really matter and who really understand how their products work in the field. These companies proactively create ways to improve the quality and value of customer input and rapidly plug that input into a root cause analysis and corrective action machine that drives continuous improvement.
What’s different about the companies that are creating a competitive advantage by creating great value out of these customer inputs? It’s all about company culture and execution, which permits forward-thinking organizations to transform complaint management from a compliance headache to a fundamental strategy for creating a sustainable competitive advantage.
Getting the most benefit from your complaint investigations can help to reduce risk in several different ways, starting with the health and safety of those who use your products. In addition, the failure to heed your customers’ input can lead to loss of customer confidence, loss of revenue, loss of market share, and more.
One of the most devastating results of a failure to solicit and heed customer input is a recall resulting from product failures in the field that went undetected early on, when a rapid remedial action could have reduced the adverse effect to the business. We know personally as consumers that we lose trust in a product or service following the adverse publicity of a recall, particularly if users of the product were injured or became ill.
My background is largely in medical devices; however, the principles, procedures, and practices translate readily into any business area. Complaint management provides quality professionals an opportunity for close contact with the customer. When we are innovative and effective in harvesting what the customers are telling us, we contribute to business performance in a significant way.
A key aspect of the upcoming webinar that I am presenting on this topic will be on lessons learned during a transformational change at a company I was involved with that dramatically improved customer responsiveness. In this webinar, we will discuss how to reengineer complaint management and the organizational structure to establish a lean, high-performing process that not only provides good quality data but also early “sentinel” alerts to emerging quality issues. This enables a company to take rapid remedial action and gives it the ability to drive any complaints involving injuries or unanticipated, serious malfunctions through a fast-paced work stream to bring about rapid failure analysis and a quick initiation of corrective actions.
I will share information on how we designed risk reduction into our products and sustained the design risk levels through continuous monitoring and reporting across the entire product life cycle.
Of course, you won’t be able to effect change if you don’t have data that are timely and accurate. Good complaint metrics are both informative and actionable as a means for continuously improving product and process quality. Metrics that provide clear information regarding ongoing product performance can serve as alerts to emerging issues so that corrections can be implemented quickly to minimize risk.
For quality professionals and departments seeking top-management recognition for contributing to business success, complaint management is a great area to optimize and publicize. Beyond the business financials aspects, there is the fundamental potential for improvements in customer satisfaction that can be truly transformational.
There are many ways that quality professionals can contribute to creating a world-class, customer-oriented complaint management powerhouse. Members of quality organizations support complaint management through:
• Original and updated risk assessments
• Failure investigations and analysis
• Corrective and preventive actions to reduce complaints
• Application of statistical tools to trending
• Redesign of products and processes to improve performance
• Management of complaint-handling operations
The proper actions in this area will help you identify ways to help your company make complaint management a centerpiece for customer satisfaction and continuous improvement.
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