Managing and evaluating customer complaint procedures in local government

Transcription

1 TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT, VOL. 8, NOS 2&3, 1997, S13(>-S134 CARFAX Managing and evaluating customer complaint procedures in local government J. F. DALRYMPLE^ & M. DONNELLY^ ^Scottish Quality Management Centre, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, UK & ^Scottish Local Authorities Management Centre, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow Gl UK lxt, Introduction The recognition that customer complaints hold one of the most important keys to quality improvement has been apparent, at least at the theoretical level, in the private sector for some time (Carr, 1992; Grant & Schlesinger, 1995; Hart, 1988; Reichheld & Sasser, 1990). Research evidence provides support for the idea that the retention of an existing customer is much more profitable and cost-effective than attempting to attract a new customer. This has given rise to a significant body of literature relating to customer retention. In seeking to retain existing customers, it has been recognized that effective complaint handling has a significant contribution to make. This paper reports on the development and piloting of an instrument for use in the assessment and development of customer complaint handling systems for use in the local authority sector. The contexts within which public sector services are designed and delivered are clearly diflferent firom those in the private sector (Donnelly et al., 1995; Donnelly & Dalrymple, 1996). In many cases, the service provision may be statutory or the service provider may have a monopoly on service provision. In such cases, the service provider has no simple metric of performance in the form of customer retention. However, this imperative is replaced by public accountability for the expenditure of public funds on service provision. The local authority sector has, in recent years, been faced with diminishing budget provision to sustain an increasing number of statutory and non-statutory services. In these circumstances, customer service has come into clearer focus and the public service ethos of many local government officers has been fiarther developed with the advent of greater awareness of quality management and quality improvement principles. Many of the services provided by local government are such that service failure may prove fatal, as in failure in a child protection case. Others may disadvantage a young person for life, as in the case of a failure in education provision. As well as these extremes, failure in the care of the elderly provision may prevent an elderly person from living independently. The local authority sector, therefore, is faced with many challenges in making more extensive provision of services on a limited budget, while making improvements in provision. In many cases, people in receipt of local authority services are increasingly having their 0954-il27/97/02S $ Carfax Publishing Ltd

2 COMPLAINT PROCEDURES IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT S131 expectations raised by central government or local elected representatives who then fail to vote the means to deliver the standards of service expected. Most local authorities in the UK now recognize the importance of effective complaints management in empowering their citizens and in helping to (re) design services that are responsive to customers' changing needs. In Scotland, the wholesale reorganization of local government has forced the new, unitary, councils to revisit the way in which customer complaints are accessed, handled and resolved. The need to harmonize previous authorities' systems and to address the issue of a service-based versus a council-wide approach present a unique opportunity to define and share best practice from a common, and comparable, starting point. Effective complaints handling There is now a considerable body of literature which seeks to quantify the benefits of effective complaints handling. In some cases, the outcome of the effective recovery from a service failure may result in a more loyal and committed customer than if there had been no cause for complaint in the first instance. In the local authority sector, the objectives of customer loyalty and increasing market share do not apply as they do in the private sector. Nevertheless, the need to design and implement effective complaints handling systems is apparent in achieving the goal of improving service quality. The characteristics of an effective complaints handling system must include: Accessibility: People must know how to complain, find it easy to register their dissatisfaction and feel reassured that their complaint will result in some action rather than be intimidated by the experience of complaining. Processing: The organization must have systems and procedures in place to deal with people and their expressions of dissatisfaction. These systems include seamless transfer between functions and levels within the organization as well as the appropriate resources to ensure the systems are capable of delivering to specified standards. Outcome: The quality improvement imperative which underlies the capture and processing of complaints data is to ensure that lessons are learned and improvements may be identified in the design and delivery of services. A further characteristic which relates well to the local authority sector is the need to disseminate good practice within the authority and ensure that all departments and functions benefit from the experience of good practice. Furthermore, dissemination across authorities is also desirable since, in most cases, there will not be any element of 'competitive advantage' to be lost by sharing good practice across authorities. Self-assessment The process of self-assessment is not a recent phenomenon. The advent of standardization of products led to the need for self-assessment against a recognized standard. Self-assessment or calibration of measuring instruments also has a significant history. The systematic process of self-assessment of business performance using characteristics other than business financial results is, however, a more recent development. The process of self assessment in an organization involves a comparison between the organization and a recognized model incorporating standards which are agreed to constitute excellence. The Deming Prize, the Baldrige Award and the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) European Quality Award all have self-assessment as their basis. The

3 S132 J. F. DALRYMPLE & M. DONNELLY EFQM business excellence model provides the comprehensive framework within which a company or other organisation may assess itself. The aim may be to compete for the award, or it may be to develop an action plan for improvement and monitor progress over time. In the case of local authorities, the needs of the customers and other stakeholders change, sometimes rapidly, over time and periodic audits against the model may help to track these changes and enable timely service redesign and development. Self-assessment provides a framework within which action plans can be developed to achieve continuous improvement in any aspect of an organization's activities. In the case of the new unitary local authorities in Scotland, there is an opponunity to look carefully at what may be disparate current practice from different authorities and adopt recognized good practice without some of the inertia inherent in change management where there is a single existing orthodoxy. The Citizens' Charter Complaints Task Force The Citizen's Charter established a Complaints Task Force in 1993 to examine the handling of complaints in public sector organizations. The role of the group was to examine current practice and to identify examples of good practice and disseminate those examples, acknowledging that there was a need for diversity in the systems for different services. There is no generic system for handling complaints in public sector organizations. However, there were found to be guiding principles which should underpin any good complaints system. The Task Force identified that all complaints systems should be: easily accessible and well publicized; simple to understand and use; speedy, with established time limits for action, and keeping people informed of progress; fair, with full and impartial investigation; confidential, to maintain confidentiality of both staff and complainers; effective, addressing all the points at issue, and providing appropriate redress; informative, providing information to management so that services can be improved. The Task Force Good Practice Guide goes on to highlight how these principles may be addressed in the public sector. It also provides a number of examples of good practice which had been identified in the course of the investigation. The instrument The instrument that has been designed is based on the model of good practice developed in the Good Practice Guide produced by the Citizen's Charter Complaints Task Force. It consists of an 18-element document with instructions, questions and prompts. It provides the basis of an action plan for development and improvement. It also allows the organization to score itself on each element and overall. The instrument covers all of the areas identified in the Citizen's Charter Good Practice Guide and presents the prompts for each element. The action planning and scoring systems enable the development of a continuous improvement approach to the complaint handling system. They provide a basis for inter-department and inter-authority comparison as well as enabling longitudinal tracking of change over time. The elements of the instrument come under three basic headings, namely accessibility, handling and outcomes.

4 COMPLAINT PROCEDURES IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT S133 Accessibility: setting clear standards; operating a clear communications strategy; removing barriers to complaining. Handling: encouraging front-line staff ownership; having formal written procedures; setting time targets; encouraging fairness in investigation; incorporating staff training; having a 'menu' for redress; actively avoiding a 'blame' culture. Outcomes: recording of complaints information; surveying customers about the outcomes of complaints; analysing complaints information and producing reports; publishing complaints information; networking different initiatives; using information technology; having internal reviews; having an external review of the complaints procedures. Each of the above elements has up to six prompts associated with it. The prompts relate to attributes which are desirable according to the model adopted. The methodology favoured in the instrument is adapted from the EFQM approach to self-assessment. This involves identification of a feature, considering the 'approach' used by the organization and scoring that approach. The next stage is to score the 'deplojonent' of the approach within the organization. The instrument also provides for the 'strengths' and 'areas for improvement' to be identified. This part of the assessment enables the action plarming aspect of the process to be undertaken. Pilot study A postal survey was carried out of the 32 unitary councils in Scotiand. This was followed up with a survey conducted at a follow-up seminar involving representatives of 26 ^of the 32 authorities held in October The survey and seminar discussion explored the current status of council complaints management practice, principles and procedures ^with a detailed examination of the role of corporate or centre-driven systems. This resulted in a detailed description of current practice in dealing with customer complaints across the different service environments and between different types of authority. The study was extended by the development of the self-assessment instrument reported on in this paper. The instrument was tested and improved in discussion with experienced local government officers. The representatives of the 26 local authorities who attended the seminar have been circulated with the self-assessment instrument. Initial indications are that the recipients have found the framework presented by the instrument useful in analysing and developing their own systems. Conclusions The importance of complaints handling in the public sector has been recognized for some time. The Citizen's Charter has identified and highlighted this area as one where much good practice has been developed over time. The advent of the wider application of total quality management and the formalization of quality improvement initiatives has resulted in the movement towards codification of, among other things, complaint handling systems. Lx)cal authorities in Scotland have an unique opportunity to implement and develop systems which will enable the empowerment of citizens and the timely (re)design of services that are responsive to customers' changing needs. The instrument described here constitutes a potential contribution to quality improvement in services of which we are all customers.

5 S134 J. F. DALRYMPLE & M. DONNELLY References CARR, L.P. (1992) Applying cost of quality to a service business, Shan Management Review, Summer, pp DONNELLY, M. & DAUIYMPLE, J.F. (1996) Service excellence in local government: a research agenda. In: S.K. Ho (Ed.) Proceedings of the First International Conference on ISO 9000 and TQM (Leicester, De Montfort University Press). DONNELLY, M., DALRYMPLE, J.F., WISNIEWSKI, M. & CURRY, A.C. (1995) The protability of the SERVQUAL scale to the public sector. In: G.K. KANJI (Ed.) Total Quality Management: Proceedings of the First World Congress (London, Chapman & Hall). GRANT, A.W.H. & SCHLESINGER, L.A. (1995) Realize your customer's full profit potential. Harvard Business Review, September-October, pp HART, C.W.L. (1988) The power of the unconditional service guarantee. Harvard Business Review, July- August, pp REICHHELD, F.F. & SASSER, W.E. (1990) Zero defections: quality comes to services. Harvard Business Review, September-October, pp

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