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Customer Complaint

Seamless Management of Customer Complaints – From Intake to Resolution

Customer Complaint
Customer Complaint
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A Model for Customer Complaint Management System: Delivering exceptional customer support by reducing customer complaints effectively

Turn customer complaints into positive opportunities and increase customer satisfaction

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What is a Customer Complaint?

Customer complaints refer to when a business does not deliver on its commitment and does not meet customer expectations in terms of the product or services. The vital aspect of every business is its clients. For greater success, businesses need more satisfied clients. And the best way to obtain new clients and maintain the existing ones is by providing them with satisfactory service. But how to understand whether your customers are happy or unhappy? A customer complaint emphasizes a problem that might be related to an organization’s product, employees or internal processes, and by hearing these problems directly from customers, an organization can investigate and improve to avoid additional complaints in the future.

What is a Customer Complaint

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What are the different types of Customer Complaints?

According to a study conducted by the University of Florida, there are five identified types of customer complaints including:

  • The Modest Customer: An organization should start a conversation using check-in call or by sending a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey in case of a modest customer who usually avoids submitting a complaint to assess customer satisfaction and actively resolve any complaints.
  • The Aggressive Customer: Aggressive customers loudly express any complaints and will not accept excuses. So, the organization should initially thank the customer for sharing their concern, then agree on the definition of the problem and explain what is required to resolve the situation and when.
  • The Imprudent Customer: An imprudent customer is used to complain in a reasonable manner so it is advisable to listen respectfully, acknowledge the existing problem, understand the details of the situation, and resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
  • The Swindle Customer: An organization should respond objectively in case of the swindle customer because they often look for a handout instead of searching for an answer or satisfactory support experience. If the customer repetitively and constantly says the provided solution is not satisfactory, then use accurate quantified data to back up your response.
  • The Constant Grouch Customer: The constant grouch customer can never be happy and continuously reports issues. So, in this kind of a situation, an organization should listen to them respectfully, then provide an honest effort to correct the situation.
different types of customer complaints
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How to analyze Customer Complaints?

Analytics is used to categorize, track, and handle customer complaints and uncover insights.

Here are some points on how to better analyze customer complaints and use them to drive more business:

  • Analyze all customer feedback: It is important to analyze all the feedback that an organization gets because some feedback gives remarkable details that could potentially be a major breakthrough for your business.

  • Categorize each feedback: Sorting feedback into categories provides a larger picture of how customers view your business and services and can help to highlight the less noticeable elements of your business operations.

  • Identify the root causes: Customer feedback will help an organization to understand what is driving customer loyalty by analyzing the root causes. To achieve this, it is necessary to have a management system to qualify feedback and search through potentially large amounts of data that will help identify root causes of issues.

  • Consolidate results and determine a plan of action: Once an organization understands the feedback results, it is time to fabricate a feasible and effective plan of action to address the issues.

  • Alert the right teams within your organization: After collecting all feedback, it is important to share it with the customer service and support teams for resolution.

  • Analyze all customer feedback: It is important to analyze all the feedback that an organization gets because some feedback gives remarkable details that could potentially be a major breakthrough for your business.

  • Categorize each feedback: Sorting feedback into categories provides a larger picture of how customers view your business and services and can help to highlight the less noticeable elements of your business operations.

  • Identify the root causes: Customer feedback will help an organization to understand what is driving customer loyalty by analyzing the root causes. To achieve this, it is necessary to have a management system to qualify feedback and search through potentially large amounts of data that will help identify root causes of issues.

  • Consolidate results and determine a plan of action: Once an organization understands the feedback results, it is time to fabricate a feasible and effective plan of action to address the issues.

  • Alert the right teams within your organization: After collecting all feedback, it is important to share it with the customer service and support teams for resolution.

Steps Involved in Handling Customer-Complaint

After receiving a customer complaint and solving the problem in order to retain that customer, an organization must use this five-step process for handling customer complaints.

  • Always ask the right questions:

    Asking the right questions helps you get to the root of the complaint, investigate if there’s a way to resolve the issue, and determine if the complaint contains useful feedback.

  • Find out the type of customer an organization is dealing with:

    There are different persona types of customers, each motivated by different needs, beliefs, attitudes, and different customers present different complex mixtures of motivations and behaviors. So, being aware of the different customer persona types can help you respond most appropriately to the person you are assisting.

  • Respond to the customer immediately:

    Customer complaints can be resolved if an immediate response goes to the unhappy customer.

  • Present a quick solution, and verify that the problem is solved:

    After identifying the root cause of the customer’s complaint, an organization should find a solution and resolve the issue. It is also crucial to verify whether the solution solves the problem.

  • Log the complaint to track trends:

    It is important for an organization to have a system to track high-volume complaints so that they can capture them, monitor how often they are hearing recurring concerns, and use this information to find long-term solutions to prevent a recurrence.

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Complaints Resolution Transformed: 3 Companies Implement Next-Gen Complaints Solution

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How is Customer Complaint good for your business?


Every business strives to improve customer satisfaction and delight but sometimes may be unable to. Customer complaints are also quite valuable and it can be a game-changer for business because of:

  • Boosting customer satisfaction: By addressing customer’s feedback and providing a quick resolution, an organization can make more than one customer happy. According to a report by Harvard Business Review, it has been found that when complaints are handled properly in a timely manner, the unsatisfied customers often become satisfied with the product or service and even more loyal to the company.
  • Upgraded product or service: Customer complaints are a source of insights on what areas should be worked on and upgraded.
  • Improved policies and procedures: To make the business run more smoothly, many companies are having various policies and procedures to identify what is not working or is unclear to the customers. By analyzing this information, an organization can judge whether procedures are required to improve or not.
  • Enhanced customer communication: Customer feedback also creates a channel of communication between the business and the customer as their opinions or input matters to the company.
  • An absolute impact on brand image: A clear channel of communication where customers can report problems related to the product, service or bad experiences also enhances the brand image and makes them more reliable and concerned.
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Great Support

Our company has been using this CQ product for our QMS beginning with January 2018. I couldn’t be more pleased with the support we have received developing and rolling out the Complaint Management tool with both internal and external customers.Thanks Lee and Prashanth!

Brian Banerdt,
Global Director of QHSE

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Key features of CQ’s customer complaint management system

ComplianceQuest’s customer complaint management system ensures companies have complete control over how customer complaints are collected, recorded, reported, and tracked in compliance with industry guidelines and regulations.

Here are some key factors of ComplianceQuest’s customer complaint management system:

  • ComplianceQuest’s customer complaint management system enables an organization to track each complaint through its lifecycle from recording and initiation to investigation, regulatory assessment reporting, and closure. The solution comes with embedded intelligence that also enables the following: continuous improvement (CI) of workflows and processes, ease of collaboration among teams, and accelerated innovation throughout the product lifecycle.
  • CQ customer complaint management system helps quality assurance leaders to automate the process of regulatory submissions and the process of generating and submitting the MedWatch Form FDA 3500 and ESG reports through our approved and validated AS2 Gateway.
  • The CQ customer complaint management system aligns all complaints that require further triaging to be reviewed by the complaint coordinator concerned. Customer complaint handling teams can triage complaints based on risk level and urgency by taking advantage of data and Artificial Intelligence framework of Einstein Predictive Analytics.

Struggling to handle your Customer Complaints? ComplianceQuest helps you to handle them in an impactful way

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Frequently Asked Questions

  • Customer complaints are a part of the business and a chance to learn and do better. The quality team can take some proactive actions to respond to customer complaints and increase customer satisfaction. Customer complaint can be handled in many ways including:

    • Avoid providing defective products to the customer: Defective products lead to incurring more costs and reputation damage.

    • Don’t let your suppliers dictate your quality: An organization should set a standard with their suppliers and hold them to it. Often, manufacturing quality teams have developed raw material specifications for their suppliers, but they don’t audit them. So, it is better to find a supplier who is willing to work together than lose a crucial customer.

    • Educate your customers about your products: An organization should help the customer understand how to use the product because sometimes customers complain as they don’t know how to use it. So, they should note common issues and update product instructions to embrace preventative measures.

    • Think about quality from a customer’s perspective: An organization should anticipate the customer’s needs that will go a long way towards benefitting your customers and your company.


    The difference between keeping a customer or losing one is the way an organization handles a complaint. So, on receiving a customer complaint, the organization should listen to what the customer has to say, then apologize for the inconvenience, find a solution and follow up with customers to see if they are happy with the way the team concerned is handling it. This will result in creating more loyal customers, improving your product and delivering a better quality of customer service.

  • After developing a policy, an organization should create a procedure for handling complaints that will be easy to understand and follow by all the staff. The procedure could include the following steps such as:

    • Receive the customer complaint: Once the complaint has been received, the team concerned should thank the customer for bringing the matter to their attention.

    • Assess the customer complaint: The organization should assess the complaint in detail so that they can understand exactly what the problem is. They can keep records of all complaints in one place or register to identify any trends or issues.

    • Get all the facts: An organization should check whether the team has understood and recorded the details of the complaint correctly or not.

    • Investigate the customer complaint about solving the problem: The complaint has to be investigated properly so that they know the root causes of the problem and solve them accordingly.

    • Resolve the customer complaint: An organization’s main focus should be resolving the complaint quickly.

    • Keep the customer updated: The organization should keep their customer informed if there are any delays in rectifying their request.

    • Monitor the customer complaint: Finally, they should contact the customer to find out if they were satisfied with how their complaint was handled. They should know what is required to avoid the problem in the future.


    Ensure that your staff is well-trained to follow the procedure when handling customer complaints and they should have the power to resolve issues as quickly as possible. An organization should encourage their customers to provide feedback and complaints so that they come to know when there is a problem and give them the opportunity to resolve it.

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