Using Software for Complaint Management: Why … · Using Software for Complaint Management: ......

Using Software for Complaint Management: Why Now Is the Time to Make the Switch from Spreadsheets

Improved efficiency, compliance, and workflow deliver immediate ROI that spreadsheets and

manual tracking methods cannot match Introduction Any complaint management system plays a key role in enabling companies to record and track complaints. Feeding directly into the organization’s reputation, brand value, and credibility as an employer, complaint management is one of the most important elements of the customer service, human relations, and general administrative processes. Issues can range from the simple, such as a product fault, to the complex, multi-layered and far-reaching – for example, where an individual’s safety has been compromised. Well handled, the complaints process can turn poor situations into opportunities to build brand or boost employee loyalty. Incorrectly managed, the consequences range from customer or employee churn to litigation, fines, or penalties. With so much depending on how complaints are documented and managed, it’s surprising to see that organizations across the board are still devoted to the spreadsheet when purpose-built software applications provide a far superior solution. The answer lies, partly, in familiarity coupled with resistance to change. Large enterprises and small businesses alike struggle with new technology adoption, frequently settling for straightforward and well-known management tools because the process of learning a new system seems too time-consuming. The spreadsheet has become the fallback in many instances, simply because it is understood and available organization-wide. The downside of settling for spreadsheets is that they don’t support growth, collaboration, or rapidly-evolving situations, and introduce multiple opportunities for human failure. Nowhere is this more evident than in the crucial complaint management function. This paper examines the rationale and risks behind organizations’ adherence to old methods of tracking complaints; discusses common misconceptions and assumptions regarding the adoption of purpose-designed software; and looks at the ROI, costs, and benefits of software versus manual methods. We provide advice on essential features and other considerations in buying a software application for complaint tracking. We also cite use cases from organizations that have successfully made the transition from spreadsheets to software.

Using Software for Complaint Management 2

Contents 1 – Complaints and Economics 2 – Risks and Misconceptions: Why the Old Ways Persist 3 – Six Signs that Manual Complaint Tracking Methods Will Lead to Failure 4 – Benefits of Using Software for Complaint Management 5 - How to Calculate ROI from Using Software for Complaint Tracking 6 - Conclusion

1 – Complaints and Economics

Consumers, globally, are finding their voice and using it to make more and more complaints. A record number of allegations of wrongdoing against teachers and other Department of Education workers were received in New York in 2013. In the same year, the BBC Television program Complainers reported that some 38 million consumer complaints were lodged against UK organizations. In the U.S., just under 90,000 charges were filed with the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission in 2015. The U.S. website Complaints List estimated that reported consumer losses in 2015 totaled $630,478,219.00. This is a substantial $13,000,000.00 more than the previous year.1 When complaint volumes are low, operations are controlled, and employees are dedicated, tracking problems with a spreadsheet seems to be perceived by all areas of business as the easiest course of action. If a company or a department receives a manageable level of complaints per day, and if the issues are relatively straightforward, it is comparatively straightforward to handle them in a timely and meaningful manner. But, as the statistics above show, it is all but inevitable that any successful business, large or small, will encounter substantial amounts of complaints. So what can corporations do to help frustrated customers, support customer service agents, and turn complaints from dissatisfied customers into profitable brand advocates? The path to more effective growth and profitability lies in ongoing improvements in business efficiencies aimed at reducing the number of consumer issues or complaints. Better customer service coupled with effective complaint management is the foundation stone of the crucial area of customer retention. Yet, while customer service software is commonly used, customer complaints tend to be shuffled off to spreadsheets. Over 52% of small to mid-sized businesses (SMB) in the U.S. use manual methods – spreadsheets, email, or paper-based processes – to manage complaints and inquiries2 despite the costs, inefficiencies, and failures of these practices. Since some 99% of all U.S. businesses are SMBs (companies with fewer than 500 employees), we must assume that, in the majority of all organizations in the U.S., complaints tracking processes are not capable of scaling to accommodate the growing volumes and complexity of complaint management today. We’ll compare the capabilities of spreadsheets versus purpose-built software in sections 3 and 4 of this paper.

1 http://www.complaintslist.com/most-complaints/in-2015/ 2 http://www.softwareadvice.com/resources/customer-service-smb-buyer-report-2014/


According to a 2015 report from Software Advice,3 52% of small businesses use manual methods to manage inbound inquiries, including complaints. These manual methods could be one or a combination of paper, spreadsheets, or email, but they all have in common an inability to scale, support collaboration, or to provide effective tracking and resolution of problems. In other words, millions of small businesses do not have a real solution in place to handle customer requests and complaints. There is a great deal of room for improvement.

2 – Risks and Misconceptions: Why the Old Ways Persist

Even in large organizations, resources are usually scarce. The smaller the company or division or department, the fewer people there are to handle the myriad tasks required to keep the function running. Time is at a premium, every employee performs multiple functions, and the result is that everyone tends to deal with what’s immediately in front of them. This means that they focus on putting out fires and use whatever familiar tools are at hand, in the hopes that when the fires have been extinguished they’ll have time to look for better solutions. In most cases, that only happens when the situation is close to disastrous. In the case of complaint management, crisis point is reached when the volume or complexity of dealing with complaints becomes overwhelming. If left until the last moment, the process of finding and implementing an automated, collaborative solution to replace current manual methods will inevitably involve a certain amount of disruption. In the next section, we’ll discuss the signs that indicate that a manual complaints tracking system is moving towards a point of failure. In general, handling customer inquiries through an email system, desk notes or spreadsheets is a recipe for systems failure. No matter what size the business or customer service department, there is no way that an individual or team of people can manually keep track of all the emails, phone calls, letters or social media rants that must be logged, responded to, and tracked from day to day until they are resolved. Manual systems are not only inefficient, but also actively get in the way of providing an acceptable level of customer service.

Because spreadsheets are a common and familiar tool, small businesses have traditionally used them to handle a wide variety of tasks, from accounting and billing to time tracking and revenue projections. However, now that companies have started automating manual processes and bringing on new technologies, spreadsheets often stand out as being static and administratively cumbersome. Importantly, spreadsheets don’t support collaboration. If a business is collaborating among individuals or departments – many IT complaints, for example, require input from tech support, engineering, and sales – processes are complex, or a situation is rapidly evolving, a spreadsheet devolves quickly into nothing more than an historic record that may or may not be up to date. In these cases, new software solutions, especially cloud-based applications, have proven to be much more effective.

3 http://www.softwareadvice.com/resources/customer-service-smb-buyer-report-2014/


One of the main reasons spreadsheets have failed to meet the needs of today’s businesses is that they weren’t designed for the way they are being used today, especially in complaint management. For collaborative, repetitive, company-wide tasks, spreadsheets are not the most efficient communication tool to share information. They are inherently difficult to update, and every time they pass through another user, the risk of gaps, mistakes, and faulty data entry increases. Manual processes can cause error rates of 12 to 15 percent, according to the Aberdeen Group.4 To summarize the downside of spreadsheets, they are error-prone; they require significant, costly manual input; they are not all that easy or intuitive to use; they exist in silos, can’t talk to each other, and frequently defeat the goals of collaboration; they don’t provide a dashboard or big picture view; and, above all, they are static, providing the opposite of the dynamic automation functionality that is a defining feature of modern software applications. Despite the risk of errors and drain on productivity, a substantial number of enterprise, mid-sized, and small companies have no overarching strategies to upgrade to more efficient solutions to manage crucial tasks. We are aware of one large organization that was tracking complex Human Resources processes by spreadsheet until the employee numbers spiked rapidly from 13,000 to more than 20,000 in four continents. The scramble to deploy tracking software was intense and painful.

Case Study: Industrial Control Repair Industrial Control Repair’s four-person IT team supported a total of 100 employees in Michigan, Canada, and Mexico. At the time, network/systems administrator Mike Driest recalls their team was in a constant state of reaction. “There were five different ways people would report issues,” says Driest. “We’d get calls on our office or cell phones, we’d receive e-mails, paper requests, or we’d be told about issues as we walked through the halls.” Information was scattered everywhere. “Without a single, central place to store our notes,” says Driest “we were forced to dig through old e-mails and forms for information, and we had to keep track of a lot of stuff in memory.” To make matters worse, it was difficult to justify why ICR should spend money on a help desk product. Without reports, management didn’t understand where the team spent its time. The IT team experimented with freeware but found that its functionality was too basic to provide any notable improvements in efficiency. They ultimately selected Issuetrak software. Driest said, “Issuetrak saves us time because we now have one central system with a built-in comprehensive knowledge base of previous issues and resolutions. We’re able to resolve similar issues quicker, and a lot more efficiently.”

3 – Six Signs that Manual Complaint Tracking Methods Are Failing

1. Uncertainty about the currency or confidentiality of information When more than one individual is working on complaint management, it’s far from easy

4 Aberdeen Group: www.aberdeen.com


to know the current status of a complaint. Individuals are responsible for updating and circulating spreadsheets, notifying other team members by email or other methods, and must be on the watch for communications gaps while ensuring confidentiality. With paper and email trails, maintaining the appropriate levels of security is challenging. In handling issues with legal ramifications or where compliance requires a specific level of reporting, this is a dangerous situation.

2. Progress monitoring is problematic

In order to resolve ongoing problems, it is essential to be able to report and monitor how well issues are being resolved, what types of complaints are being submitted, and the performance of teams or individuals. Spreadsheets are static and make it almost impossible to track evolving situations. They don’t support mobility or team activity. If, for example, one employee consistently solves complaints in record time, you need to know why since important best practices can then be shared. Without a central dashboard, it is difficult to know, on an ongoing basis, which products or services are not performing as promised.

Fig 1: Dashboard features in software make it simple to track complaints and incidents.

3. Prioritizing has become a challenge It may seem obvious, but prioritizing complaints can become overwhelming when the volume of activity is high. Spreadsheets, email, or paper systems make it harder to prioritize workflow in rapidly evolving situations. Team members must use personal judgment to assign tasks, which leads to errors and delays. An application for complaint tracking goes a long way to solving the prioritization problem. It uses custom formulas enabling the user to categorize requests according to agreed criteria; set user expectations about time to resolution; and access a centralized repository of answers and procedures for frequently-arising issues.

4. Accountability is an issue All organizations need to understand where resources are being deployed, how effective they are, and whether others are needed. With manual complaint tracking methods, accountability is a challenge – especially in legal or compliance cases where the company as a whole bears responsibility for any process failures.


5. Collaboration is under strain As a one-person department, it is a straightforward task to create a smooth-running complaint management process based on manual methods that perform adequately. If you add a second or third team member, collaboration immediately becomes a challenge, as micro communications gaps can expand into major organizational failures. Sharing becomes a matter of individual responsibility. Without a centralized system including built-in checks and monitoring, errors are hard to spot and proliferate all too easily.

6. When someone moves on, the system implodes Continuity is a big problem without a central tracking application. It’s not just the challenge of picking through someone’s email or working out their spreadsheet formulae – other users can never know for sure which issues are still outstanding or whether all data has been entered correctly. With an issue tracking system, you can reassign tasks and check the status of any issue even if a key team member leaves.

4 – Benefits of Using Software for Complaint Management

Research conducted in 2014 by Software Advice5 shows that 90 percent of businesses (primarily SMBs) seeking to purchase customer service software are seeking solutions to handle and track trouble-ticket inquiries and customer complaints. Their priority for purchase is to solve issues that they are currently failing to handle; the overwhelming issue within this category is the inability to respond adequately to customer complaints. The survey pinpoints areas of failure including lack of understanding about who in the organization has responded to the complaint and when, poor response times, inadequate responses, and inability to keep track of the level of follow up that is required.

Figure 2: The majority of potential customer service software buyers are looking for solutions that will improve trouble ticket management capabilities.

5 http://www.softwareadvice.com/resources/customer-service-smb-buyer-report-2014/


Investing in a new software system for complaint management will provide major improvements in efficiency for any organization. Below are some the key advantages of using complaint tracking systems:

a) Automation

With spreadsheets and manual systems, the onus is always on individuals to manage, meet deadlines, and communicate the progress of a complaint. Complaint tracking with software instead of email and spreadsheets creates a centralized repository of information for all interested parties to reference. Reminders and key notifications are delivered automatically, and the ticket shows everything relevant to that particular complaint while access is restricted by password and other protections. Applications that facilitate complaint tracking also provide the best way of documenting key information for future reference (see “Compliance and Security” below), effectively creating a “group memory” plus an automated and collaborative system.

Fig 3: Using software for complaint management allows users to set up automated reminders easily. Automatic ticket management works by:

• Issuing a unique tracking number for every request • Enabling instant assignment of the complaint to an individual or department • Storing every communication thread connected to that complaint • Enabling authorized personnel to quickly access information about every

complaint according to pre-defined criteria, such as owner, status, category, or priority

b) Centralization and continuity

When several people are working on a particular complaint or set of problems, a software system makes it far simpler to track information. The ticket tracking system will automatically ensure that the right people know what needs to be done. This is particularly useful if a complaint can’t be immediately resolved or if individuals previously handling a complaint are not available. Authorized personnel can open an issue and see all the relevant information in one location.


c) Compliance and security When dealing with complaints, organizations of all sizes must bear in mind an increasing number of local or federal compliance requirements. This includes providing documentary proof of compliance with agreed codes of practice at all stages of the complaints process, under penalty of fines or other punitive action. In instances where legal action is a possibility, the proof of documentation is critical, and failure to maintain appropriate records could have far-reaching consequences.

Using software for complaint tracking is one of the most effective ways of documenting an issue for legal or compliance purposes. Unlike a spreadsheet or email process, a complaint management system functions as “System of Record.” As the complaint resolution progresses, all the key information is documented within the ticket tracking system so that at any time the information is instantly available.

Government and Legal Enforcement Very few areas of industry are unaffected by regulatory compliance. If you are a supplier to a medical organization, take credit card payments, send invoices, or hire employees, the long arm of compliance will likely reach out to you.

Moreover, it is in the interest of government departments to prove they are doing their job. Beyond fines, audits, and public shaming, they document complaints, infringements, and penalties in a variety of online resources. Many of the 300,000 complaints handled by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) are listed on its web site.6 The U.S. Health and Human Services department maintains a database of case examples and corrective actions applied across all areas, from individuals to major entities.7 From the Vegas Sands Corp, which in 2014 agreed to pay $47 million to the government for failing to report suspicious customer transactions to the employee of a clinic who improperly accessed a patient’s records, or the four universities currently the subject of complaints to the U.S. Department of Education for allegedly mishandling sexual assault cases,8 no organization is too large or small to handle complaints with anything but rigorous attention.

Every company needs to be able to easily and effectively detect and analyze consumer complaints by capturing relevant interactions, storing data where it can be quickly retrieved and reviewed, and enabling early warning and preventative action.

d) Monitoring, tracking, and reporting metrics Implementing software for complaint tracking allows you to determine how the process is functioning by whether someone is working efficiently since you are tracking information as it evolves. You can run a report on every ticket your team members, or individuals, have worked on to see where best practices are making things more efficient, or vice versa.

6 http://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/weve-heard-more-than-300000-complaints-should- we-hear-from-you/ 7 http://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/compliance-enforcement/examples/all-cases/index.html#case7 8 http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/08/us/sexual-assault-title-ix-complaints/


Wrongful Termination Wrongful termination lawsuits are on the rise, exceeding 50,000 cases a year according to insurance industry estimates. Employers lose over 50 percent of all wrongful termination cases, and there are more than 20 legal grounds for making a claim for wrongful termination or discharge. For employers, one of the key elements of defending against such cases is the ability to show that the given reasons for termination were true and consistent with courses of action taken before the employee was dismissed. Central monitoring and reporting systems are invaluable when dealing with these potentially high profile and expensive cases.

Employing a software approach to complaint management helps identify trends and patterns in the organization, which frequently points the way to areas in need of improvement as well as best practices that can be replicated on a departmental or company-wide level. Knowing how your organization is trending when it comes to overall complaint volume, the types of complaints you’re receiving, and how you’re receiving them is half the battle when it comes to taking broader initiatives to address the issue. Software systems allow you to keep a historical record of all three so you can see the direction you’re headed and how to correct potential issues before they occur.

Case Study: Data Leads to Actionable Insights A major floral supplier serving 90% of the global market is leveraging the insights generated from its issues tracking software used for complaint management to apply strategic improvements across the organization. In addition to addressing complaints more efficiently, the reports are analyzed to identify trends, recurring problems, or bottlenecks. For example, a high number of complaints about a proprietary software system resulted in the organization moving to a different technology platform, as well as radically improving their IT training methods. They were also able to identify areas where investment in personnel would provide significant ROI. The company has also been able to replicate effective processes across the entire organization. By providing actionable insights to the management team, the reporting function of the software has made a quantifiable contribution to the company’s financial success.

e) Improves workflow prioritization

Ticket tracking allows you to more easily prioritize workflow, according to pre-determined criteria which would assign a high ranking to issues like safety or business urgency and push matters of convenience or personal preference to a lower place in the queue (e.g., “The help desk portal is slow” vs. “I was attacked in the parking garage”). It is easy to define priorities or apply a custom workflow, for example routing tech, product, or service complaints in one direction, while immediately escalating sexual harassment or public safety complaints to more senior management. The larger the workforce or customer base, the more crucial the prioritization becomes. In a complaints department fielding multiple issues per day, the system will provide an essential safeguard against wasting time on easy but inessential complaints as opposed to mission-critical problem resolution.


f) Organizational improvement Transparency, monitoring, and reporting are essential functions to fuel decision making in growing organizations. Complaint management systems provide vital insight to senior management on issues including resource allocation, performance, and investment needs. Software features important to complaint management include a management dashboard, which enables the organization to see at a glance how the organization is performing, benchmarked against historic, department-to-department, competitor, or other data.

Case Study: Silver Diner This chain of traditional diners found itself unable to act on the thousands of customer comments it received every year. According to the senior network administrator, information technology, although the diner tried to track every customer comment, good and bad – their traditional approach meant that management was never sure when or if someone followed up on comments. Nor did the company have a way to report on trends in customer feedback. The company implemented Issuetrak software to manage the process. The system was customized to ensure the restaurant chain collects the right information and that every customer comment goes through a consistent, monitored process. Issuetrak software automatically assigns and alerts the general manager at the relevant restaurant. For example, customer feedback enables the diner chain to make informed decisions on whether or not to make menu updates and to make adjustments based on customer comments and complaints. General managers receive emails alerting them about a new comment and then personally call that customer. Each time a manager calls, he or she notes the action in Issuetrak, so executives know the manager attempted to resolve the issue. When the manager reaches a customer, he or she notes the interaction in the system and closes the issue.

5. How to Calculate ROI from Complaint Tracking Software Few organizations make a habit of calculating the return on Investment (ROI) from the software they use for complaint tracking. Primarily, this is because there are too many moving parts. ROI calculations are extremely complex when results must be calculated according to the different priorities of individuals and departments, if the organization is growing quickly, or if the company focus changes to address new markets. Another issue is that complaint management is a two-way street. On one side, inbound inquiries are all about getting issues resolved as quickly and effectively as possible. On the other hand, internal teams are judged on how they manage requests of varying quantities and complexity. Sometimes, a complaint interaction can be extremely cordial but not actual solve a problem. How is success to be measured? Finally, there’s the problem of the baseline benchmark. Few companies deploying software for complaint tracking have established quantifiable improvement criteria from which other solutions can be evaluated. When it comes to calculating ROI, not knowing where to start seems to be the main problem. But by taking a step back, establishing benchmarks for a limited number of key benefits based on current status/status before implementation, and measuring progress against these metrics over time, organizations can arm themselves with solid facts that enable them to balance the expense and time of introducing a complaint tracking application against the overall business


benefits. These can include more efficient issue handling, better monitoring and reporting, improved support and higher customer/user satisfaction levels. When supported by concrete ROI statistics, these benefits can provide actionable insights to the corporate management team, enabling best practices to be replicated and organizational issues to be solved. Here are some key questions to ask in order to benchmark how well a software application for complaint management is performing:

– Amount paid for software including licensing, installation, training, and annual maintenance

– Time between installation and full productivity – Scalability/costs to add users – Cost of upgrades over one, two, and five years? – Average time spent per action before installing the software – Average time spent per action after installing the software – Average number of actions is completed per day before installation – Average number of actions completed after installation

Asking the following questions at regular intervals will provide deeper insights on efficiencies and benefits:

– Is the software used in multiple departments or for different purposes? – Is issue tracking software new to the organization or a replacement for an

existing solution? – How many users submit issues? – How many issues are submitted per day/week/month? – How many staff are responsible for managing and resolving issues? – What is the current average time to resolution? – How many issues remain open per day/week/month? – How much time is spent reporting issues? – How long does it take to get a snapshot of current and open issues? – How easy is it for users to report issues? – Current customer satisfaction levels

A survey of Issuetrak customers conducted in 20139 indicated that users of its software experienced a return on investment of 126%. In other words, for every $1.00 invested in using Issuetrak software, our clients reported an additional gain of $1.26. In addition to financial improvements, users highlighted what we term “strategic benefits” – value including efficiency, consistency, and customer satisfaction experienced during high growth or extraordinary circumstances that could not be benchmarked against previous activity.

9 For a copy of the research results, please contact Issuetrak at [email protected]


Case Study: Handling Harassment Claims in Higher Education HR departments in higher education establishments must follow strict procedures to comply with regulations, protect individuals, and maintain relevant documentation. This is particularly true in the case of complaints. Any individual who believes they have been the subject of discrimination or harassment, or who suspects it to have occurred, can file a complaint. Regardless of circumstances, HR must systematically follow up every such case. As soon as a complaint is filed, the HR department needs to take prescribed steps, including reviewing documents, talking to witnesses, and holding discussions with the accused person, so that the complaint can either be moved forward to formal investigation, or dropped. Despite the outcome, HR must keep all documentation related to the case and must maintain confidentiality. With so much riding on the outcome, it’s essential for HR departments to be sure that every part of the complaints process has been undertaken correctly. Our University customers tell us that it’s impossible to track these issues using spreadsheets or low-tech/no tech methods. Here’s how they typically use Issuetrak software: When a claim is made, the case is entered into the system, which creates an issue and categorizes the type of alleged violation. HR can also add additional instructions, notes, or documentation such as witness contact details or evidence. The Issuetrak application allows the case to be automatically queued for assignment or personally assigned by management to an HR team member. During investigation of the complaint, the team members are able to add notes, attach pertinent documents, and enter witness testimonies. If the claim is not warranted, the issue can be closed. If it is valid, all evidence to the case is available from one source for counsel and attorneys. To maintain confidentiality, the Issuetrak software incorporates a specific security setup feature that limits ability to view the issue to relevant team members only.

Unresolved complaints are highlighted on the dashboard so that managers are aware of all outstanding claims. The software provides managers with comprehensive reporting, including the number of hours spent on each open case, the types of complaints being handled, and the amount of time each team member spends completing their assigned work. This allows managers to identify and resolve any recurring issues and improve resource allocation. Higher education HR professionals confirm that it’s important to have safeguards against failures in process in matters of such sensitivity. It’s essential for both victims and HR departments to know how their case is progressing at any stage, and that the documentation, process, and monitoring are less at risk from human error.


Conclusion Every organization in the world today will experience more complaints than ever before. With regulatory compliance an increasing presence in daily business life, there has been an exponential increase in the numbers of processes, interactions, and documents that need to be tracked, monitored, reported, resolved, or escalated. Although the spreadsheet has traditionally been the first port of call, it’s an uncertain and unreliable method and lacks the automation, tracking, reporting, and monitoring capabilities of modern software applications designed for managing business issues such as internal and external complaints and incidents. The best software systems are easy to implement, simple to learn, highly automated and collaborative, and very affordable. They far outstrip manual methods in helping organizations deal with complaints, comply with regulations, and use time productively. Rather than waiting until spreadsheets and human error add up to major problems, isn’t it time to let software take the burden?

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