Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has become very important to many companies in the last few years. One element of the mix of services provided by CRM deals with Customer Complaints. “Companies often wish to record statistics about the Complaints that they receive from their Customers and, in some cases, other interested parties including Suppliers”, says Eur Ing Robin Oldman, Senior Consultant at Precision Design Technology Limited about this recent project, “So the data handling is an important aspect to consider in any design. Add to this the complexity of a mobile field workforce who is best placed to resolve most Complaints and there is a heady mix of requirements in specifying such a system.”

Precision Design Technology Limited (PDTL) has been instrumental in providing such a Complaints System to a large plc recently. One Senior User declared, “The System will give us much better monitoring and control of Complaint traffic and obviate transmission delays out to our field staff. If any unforeseen delay threatens our Service Level, we can recover the record and resolve the Complaint within the Team. The Company has always been very Customer focussed; now that focus just got sharper.” The system is deployed using web technology to provide penetration to field staff using dial-up access to a central Complaints database.

A workflow structure is placed over the Complaint record upon its acquisition into the system, so that at all times the central staff are able to ascertain the progress of the Complaint through the system. This provides an improved mechanism for managing the workload and is able to provide accurate and timely statistics for a number of aspects of Complaints handling performance.

The challenge of notification to field staff, who have dial-up access to e-mail and to the system, was tackled using SMS Messaging to the field staff member’s mobile phone. This messaging is delivered automatically to both the field staff member assigned to resolve the Complaint and, if necessary, to a nominated Manager when escalation is required. Mindful of SMS delivery delays at peak traffic times and the need for fast resolution with some classes of Complaint, the central Complaints Team support direct telephone calling to the field staff in a small number of cases. “The business cannot afford to be caught out if there is a considerable delay in SMS messages reaching field staff mobile phones, so the Team double check sensitive cases”, says Robin.

The benefits to the business are numerous and include better and more consistent recording of Complaints at the point of entry and immediate visibility of new Complaints to the Complaints Team affording better initial handling and evaluation of incoming traffic. The assignment of Complaints to staff for resolution is now transparent and immediate, affording clear workload indication to the assignee and a uniform handling process. The central Complaints Team are able to monitor progress with the resolution of any Complaint during the entire process meaning that lost records are a thing of the past. Service levels can be defined and progress checked against these levels, with reporting to management to indicate where improvements could be made in Complaint handling. “This is not a blame culture”, reports Robin, “but a genuine desire to provide a better Complaints service to everyone who has dealings with the Company. If it were possible to provide resolutions to all the Complaints before they are reported, that would be perfection, but while perfection is still just out of reach the aim is to provide the best possible achievable service.”

The specification and design work used a structured methodology preferred by the Company and PDTL staff involvement continued throughout development, testing and implementation.