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 • • • • • 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