Surely on more than one occasion you’ve bought a defective product, an item was delivered to you in poor condition, or you didn’t receive the service you were hoping for.
In these cases, you’ve probably experienced two different situations:
- Some businesses don’t want to accept responsibility and take as long as possible to resolve the issue (in this case, your satisfaction will be practically null).
- Other companies react immediately and quickly resolve the incident to ensure you remain highly satisfied.
Consumers of all kinds of products understand that the complexity of current commercial relationships can produce setbacks and difficulties that can be quite hard to fully stamp out.
However, despite knowing that these circumstances are inevitable, consumers don’t understand —or forgive— companies that can’t quickly and satisfactorily resolve incidents.
This shows that large companies are capable, to a great extent, due to their ability to solve issues as quickly as possible.
Grup Barcelonesa is highly client-centred, which allows us to offer our clients the very best possible service.
Our extensive experience has allowed us to create a complaints management system that is based on always offering the correct response as quickly as possible when potential incidents arise.
Keep reading if you want to know more about how we work to provide a complaints resolution service with the aim of ensuring that our clients’ level of satisfaction is maintained and even increased.
The paramount importance of complaints
You may be wondering why we place so much importance on our clients’ complaints.
We take the proper management of any incident very seriously because we firmly believe that continuous improvement is the fundamental element to any successful company.
At Grup Barcelonesa, we place fundamental importance on complaints for two reasons:
- A well-managed complaint is the best tool for earning customer loyalty: all our clients understand that, during the sale of products and services, a situation may arise that could lead to their need to lodge a complaint; what they don’t understand, on any account, is a situation in which we don’t swiftly resolve said incident.
- Continuous monitoring of complaints offers us a highly precise diagnosis of the efficiency of our processes: at Grup Barcelonesa, we are aware that a complaint is a vital piece of information that can help us improve our processes (production, sales, logistics, etc.). But above all, it allows us to know where we can improve our processes and therefore prevent the reasons for the complaint from surfacing again.
Basic principles of complaints management
It’s clear to us that a client complaint means we unfortunately did something incorrectly that we should have done correctly the first time around.
Therefore, we start with a constructive, self-critical approach in order to resolve any incidents as quickly as possible and always prioritising the interest of the client.
With that in mind, at Grup Barcelonesa we’ve set some objectives based on these two indicators:
- Percentage of complaints for the number of delivered products: we analyse the percentage of complaints and propose, each year, action plans to work toward lowering those percentages.
- Response time: another detail that is highly important to us is complaints response and resolution times. Therefore, every year we try to lower both our immediate response times as well as our overall resolution times.
How me manage complaints at Grup Barcelonesa
The aim of the current company process is to minimise the rate of complaints, as well as the response and resolution times, in order to provide our clients with greater satisfaction.
It is a well-established process wherein the managing staff has extensive experience and resolution skills.
1. The sales department is always the recipient of any complaints
The sales agent and their back-office are the connecting link between Grup Barcelonesa and our clients, and are therefore responsible for channeling any issues or dissatisfaction that may arise.
The client need only call the sales department to explain the issue and the complaints resolution protocol will be immediately activated in our computer system.
2. The complaint is forwarded to the technical department
Once the complaint has been recorded, the technical department is then responsible for starting the investigation into the reason behind the incident, responding to the client, and determining potential corrective actions.
3. Contact the involved departments
The technical department team looks into what happened by speaking with the involved departments in order to reach a solution.
This allows us to determine the cause that led to the complaint.
What’s more, this entire process is documented in writing so it can be reviewed and followed up on at any time and by any individual within the organisation.
4. Resolution of the complaint
Once the incident has been investigated, any relevant conclusions are drawn.
Three different actions are taken during this phase of the process:
- The client is immediately provided with a solution: we proceed to resolving the complaint as soon as we become aware of it —even if we don’t know the reason behind what happened— to ensure the client isn’t made to wait and so we can resolve the situation.
- The client is notified of the results of the investigation: when we determine the cause of the problem, we contact the client again to explain the source of the incident and what corrective measures we’ve implemented to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
- The complaint is analysed from an economic perspective: in the event that financial compensation has to be provided. The sales administration is responsible for this action and verifies whether or not to provide financial compensation.
5. Corrective actions
Once the source of the problem has been established, corrective action is taken, whenever appropriate, with the aim of preventing the complaint from repeating itself (wherever possible).
Company policy dictates that, when closing a complaint, the client is always notified in writing of the cause of the complaint and the corrective measures that have been taken.
6. Review of the efficacy of the corrective measures and monitoring of the process indicators
The complaints team, comprised of representatives from all areas of the company (including Management), meets monthly to:
- Analyse the complaints from the various involved departments.
- Propose corrective actions and determine whether implemented corrective actions are effective.
- Assess the evolution of the process indicators on which goals are set to ensure their proper performance.
Grup Barcelonesa and its commitment to continuous improvement
At Grup Barcelonesa we strive to offer our clients the very best possible service. For that reason we are always working to try to meet your needs. Were a complaint to occur, we would take it as a unique opportunity to earn your customer loyalty by means of fast and effective resolution to minimise the impact of the incident.
