Complaint Management Systems: making them work for you

Complaint Management Systems:
making them work for you
9th National Investigations Symposium
Clare Petre, Energy & Water Ombudsman NSW
Elements of good complaint
management system
What are the essential ingredients of a good
complaint management system?
Supports the work of
complaint handlers
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Effectiveness – logical structure to the data that it captures
Efficiency – incorporates automated workflows for common tasks
Accessibility – easy to use
Reliability – well supported by IT and robust
Comprehensiveness – ability to do and capture all work within
the database
• Work load management – ability to assign cases, view cases
by individual, team or type
Integrity
• Neutral language – field terms and file notes
• Privacy principles – allows for easy provision of complainant’s
file if required
• “SMH” test
Quality control
• Business rules – incorporates logic checks to control input
• How do you check your data?
manually?
exception reports?
random sample?
• Is it important to record and track time
and/or days open?
Supports all of the work of the office
• Data should be central to and underpin the activities of the
office
• System should make you think about whether the complainant
is raising a systemic issue
patterns
vulnerable complainants
• Link individual complaints to a systemic issue
– regulatory gaps/inconsistency
Supports all of the work of the office
• Comprehensive but useful data collection
• Allow you to speak with authority and credibility
based on complainant/respondent experience
submissions government
media
regulators
regulatory gaps/inconsistency
members/participants publications
• Internal business purposes
KPIs workforce planning
EWON: CMS closure tab
Screenshot
showing the
closure tab
with systemic
issues,
demographics,
outcome etc
Reporting
• Reporting capability should be an integral part
of any CMS development
• System should allow for:
standard and ad hoc reports
dice and splice all data as required
ability to combine quantitative and
qualitative (complaint summaries and data)
• EWON reporting
members; weekly, monthly, quarterly
regulators; quarterly, ad hoc
internal; KPIs, policy, investigations workload
EWON: Complaint management
system journey
• Developed a custom CMS in Microsoft Access (legacy system)
• Moved to a customised Microsoft Dynamics CRM version 4
(customer relationship management) system in 2010
• Changed database suppliers in 2012 and are now working on
the next iteration in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
EWON: Lessons learnt
• Understand the CMS product to minimise reliance on the sales talk
from the Business Development Manager
• Choose a robust product from a supplier with good support
• Use out of the box features where possible and only customise for
the ‘must haves’
• Develop/join user groups to share information with other
organisations using the same system
• Ensure that any IT systems that support the CMS keep pace with
organisational growth
• Have an internal method for collecting and assessing staff
suggestions