1. 1
Building a culture that values complaints
Paul McFadden
Complaints Standards Authority (CSA)
Academic Registrars’ Council
Developing a Good Practice Framework for student complaints
6 June 2013

2. 2
The need to improve
“Not fit for purpose”
 Complex and confusing: Need to make complaining
more straightforward. Reduce the complexity of the
current complaints handling systems. SPSO premature
rates as an example of this.
 Inconsistent and lacking co-ordination: within and
across sectors. Need to remove potential for duplication
and overlap.
 Too slow: need to reduce the time taken
 Not Getting it Right First time: reduce unnecessary
customer interaction. Need to deal with complaints more
locally
 Focused on organisational need not on customer
 Inconsistent learning: need to enable the lessons
learned to be applied more easily across all public
services.
 Lack of focus on performance and costs - value for
money

3. 3
Public Services Reform
(Scotland) Act (2010)
Complaints Standards Authority
 Model Complaints Handling
Procedure for each sector
 Standardised, simplified
 Consistent for service user
 Sectoral approach
 Centre of best practice
 Develop and share best practice
across sectors
 Building networks
 Providing training and support

4. 4
Building a culture that values
complaints
 Quick, simple process
 Roles and responsibilities are well defined from frontline
to boardroom with empowered staff and effective
governance
 Effective complaints resolution is embedded in the culture
of the organisation
 A performance culture drives complaints handling
 Organisational learning from all complaints informs service
improvement

5. 5
One standardised CHP
 What is / is not a complaint
 2 stages, standard timescales
 Clear roles and responsibilities and
good governance
 Standards for recording, reporting,
learning and publicising
 Dealing with unacceptable actions
 Share complaints performance and
lessons learnt throughout organisation
 Share outcomes and action taken with
customers

6. 6
Quick, simple process

7. 7
Quick, simple process
 Empowered, customer-focused frontline
 Complaints well defined
 Resolve quickly at, or close to, point of delivery
 Local, easily accessed
 Telephone / face to face
 DWP 80%
 Brings challenges – quality of record is crucial
 Get it right first time culture - One co-ordinated investigation
 Removing safety nets
 Making the right decisions
 learning lessons
 training staff

8. 8
Quick, simple processWhy?
 Less confusing – customers understand the process and get a quick
response
 Customers are happier - customers want problems fixed quickly (or
explained)
 Things don’t ‘snowball’
 Cheaper / takes less time
 2010 OFWAT report – 15 minutes to resolve complaints at the
frontline; 70 hours at final stage
 NAO report on DWP - frontline resolutions 40 times cheaper
 DWP 50% reduction
 Less senior staff time
 Less duplication of reviewing same facts and issues

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Complaints handling roles and
responsibilities are well defined
 Frontline staff are empowered
 Know when, how and in what
circumstances they can act
 Know when authorised to say sorry and
take corrective action
 Senior management ownership
 Signing off investigations – the final
decision
 Monitoring complaints info – concerns
and trends
 Are staff making right decisions?
 Board reviewing individual cases
 Right management and governance
processes in place?
 Leading culture
Ownership and
responsibility
Governance and
management
culture (See Mid-
Staffs)

10. 10
Effective complaints resolution is
embedded in the culture of the organisation
All staff - welcome and ‘own’ complaints
 Don’t see them as a threat or act defensively
 Mind-set of quick resolution - staff automatically and instantly contact customers
 Admit failings – all staff empowered to apologise and put things right
 Move away from the legalistic mindset: ‘apology = liability’
Organisation - Value Complaints
 Need a clear, very visible signal from the most senior level
 Complaints on agenda - throughout organisation : team meetings, executive team,
frontline, performance targets
 Plan and improve service delivery on basis of customer insight
 Give sufficient status and weight to complaints managers – professionalise

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What customers want when they
complain
1. An acknowledgement of the error
2. Confirmation that they, the customer, were right
3. An understanding of why things went wrong
4. An acceptance of responsibility and a meaningful and
timely apology
5. Reassurance that the problem has been addressed and
will not happen again
6. A reconciliation of a relationship
7. The restoration of the customer’s reputation
Department for Communities and Local Government June 2009
‘Getting it right, righting the wrongs’
www.communities.gov.uk/documents/communities/pdf/1258299.pdf

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The power of apology
A meaningful apology
Accept responsibility for failings
 Not blaming anyone else and not making excuses
 accept total responsibility for action or inaction.
Express regret
 Empathy, acknowledgement of the injustice caused.
Resolve the matter,
 or commit to take action to prevent reoccurrence

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A performance culture drives
complaints handling
 Not all about reducing the numbers
 Focus on resolving more, more quickly at the frontline -
 Monitor and reduce proportions resolved at frontline
 Target phone contact / on-the-spot
 Reduce number of escalated complaints
 Reduce ‘lost’ complainants – e.g. SPSO prematures
 Average times
 Reduce uphelds
 Measure customer satisfaction
 Measure responsiveness - what and how often have you changed as a
result of complaints?
 Base-line and benchmark performance – private and public sector
 Focus on costs

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Organisational learning
 Record, analyse and report on all complaints
 You can’t manage what you don’t measure
 Managers act on regular reports - identify, action and review quarterly
 What are we getting wrong and why?
 Service failures identified, actioned and reviewed quarterly
 Root cause analysis
 How do we improve?
 Share with staff stories of poor service / customer journeys
 Allow staff to make quick changes to service delivery
 Communicate learning to customers
 Publicly report complaints outcomes, trends and action taken
 Student awareness of value of CHP
 Put complaints on the agenda – from the board room to team meetings

15. “Such an approach completely ignored
the value of complaints in informing the
Board of what was going wrong and what,
If anything was being done to put it right.”
The Trust Board was limited in the learning it received
from complaints. In particular, it did not receive details of
any individual complaints and, indeed, the Chair of the
Trust did not review any of them personally. Her reason
for this remote approach was that:
“As far as complaints are concerned, … individual
complaints always risk giving a biased and partial
view of what’s happening in the trust. A complaint
that’s investigated properly and resolved is then put
to bed and doesn’t need to come to the attention of
the hierarchy in the organisation, actually.”
Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry, volume one, page 250

16. “However, it is far from certain that a more
penetrating look at complaints would have
shaken her confidence in the management of
the Trust because her instinctive reaction to
complaints appears to have been a
combination of scepticism about their
substance and a tolerance, borne of a belief
that such complaints were not uncommon in
the NHS.”
Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry, volume one, page 250-251

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Challenges
 Culture Change
 Frontline and senior staff
 Are HEIs customer focused?
 Consensus on CHP
 No. of stages – no review stage
 Training and staff awareness
 ‘All frontline staff?’
 Decision making and learning
 10 years of SPSO – same messages
 Recording ALL complaints
 Definition of complaint / service request
 ‘Informal’ complaints
 Systems
 Mobile staff
 Publicising complaints performance
 Higher Education - competitive market place

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Supporting and promoting best practice
Online resources - www.valuingcomplaints.org.uk
 Complaints handling developments and good practice resources
 Ask each other – cross-sector discussion forum / community
 Ask CSA – implementation advice
Networks of complaints handler
Training
 E-learning modules
Module 1: Understanding the Model Complaints Procedure
Module 2: What Is A Complaint?
Module 3: What Customers Want When They Complain
Module 4: Getting It Right From the Start
Module 5: Active Listening
Module 6: Finding the Right Solution
Module 7: Learning From Complaints
Module 8: Managing Difficult Behaviour
 Investigation and Frontline classroom-based courses

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Compliance / performance
 Compliance
 SPSO Act
 Regulatory structures
 Performance
 Transparency

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How do you match up?
 Quick, simple process?
 Is it accessible?
 Easy to navigate?
 How efficient? Do you know?
 Roles and responsibilities well defined from frontline to boardroom?
 How empowered and authorised are your staff?
 Governance post-Francis?
 Complaints culture of the organisation?
 Welcoming, valuing complaints?
 Legalistic?
 Does a performance culture drives complaints handling?
 Do you report, publish, target, IMPROVE?
 Organisational learning from all complaints informs service improvement
 What processes in place to analyse, report and learn from all complaints?

22. 22
UK Public Administration Select Committee
Cross-departmental inquiry
1. What objectives should Ministers adopt when considering how
complaints about Government and about public services
provided by Government are handled?
2. How effectively do Government departments and public
service providers use complaints to improve the service
provided?
3. How quickly do complaints systems deal with legitimate
grievances and provide redress?
4. How easy is it to make a complaint about a Government
department or agency, and how could this be improved?
5. What lessons from Francis Report?

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Any Questions
?

24. www.valuingcomplaints.org.uk
CSA@spso.org.uk