Customer complaints and competency management both play a vital role in any quality management system within the workplace. As an essential part of business success, customer relations should be top of mind for every employee, from directors and managers all the way through to entry level staff. Competency management ensures that your employees have the skills, commitment, knowledge and abilities that enable them to work effectively in their role within the organisation, thereby providing a higher level of customer satisfaction.
Customer Complaints – Prevention and Management
Customer complaints comprise of any problems that are reported to the company, which could be related to products, specific services or even overall service levels. Complaints are classified by their severity, as well as the department in which the complaint occurred. Serious, on-going complaints should be addressed to management, especially if these affect overall quality management and company reputation. In this instance, problems can be resolved through various strategies. Other complaints may be one-offs, and can be dealt with simply. Once the issue has been resolved, performance levels as well as customer satisfaction levels can be restored. In order to ensure that the risk of complaints is reduced, it is essential to prevent issues from arising in the first place. Prevention strategies could include clear processes and standards in regards to customer relations, with training and other tactics provided for employees who deal with customers as part of their job descriptions. Consistent customer feedback, requests and other communication channels should also be managed as part of the prevention strategy, which enables client needs to be better understood. Competency management is also a vital part of complaint prevention. This will ensure more effective customer relations, and ultimately, improved quality management across all departments and within the organisation itself.
Understanding Competency Management
Competency management delivers a consistent, clear process and system that calculates the capabilities of current and prospective employees and managers. This system offers the following features:
- Training and assessment processes optimise training budgets, to observe irregularities between job requirements and employee skill levels.
- Individual competency assessments are used to appraise current employees, or during the application and hiring process of new employees and managers.
- Company competency assessments are done in order to make sure that employee skills are assigned to relevant projects and roles in order for them to perform their responsibilities effectively.
In order for your organisation to ensure a higher level of customer satisfaction, the first step is to address competency levels across the board. This will allow you to determine if training is required, or whether employees have been placed in roles that are best suited to their current skills. Through competency management, customer complaints can be dealt with in a far more effective manner, which means that both customers and your key employees benefit from a greater level of quality management within your organisation.
