A resident has a repair that has not been done properly three times. She decides to complain.
The website has a complaints page explaining a three stage process in the language of a policy document. She is not sure whether her situation is a complaint or a service request, whether she has to do something before complaining, or how long any of it takes.
She sends an email, hears nothing for three weeks, and then contacts her councillor, a regulator and the organisation's chief executive on the same afternoon. The original complaint was straightforward and entirely resolvable.
Step 1: make it obvious how to complain
Prominent, plainly named, and reachable without knowing the word the organisation uses for it.
Step 2: explain the difference between a complaint and a request
Which residents cannot be expected to know, and which determines whether anything is logged correctly.
Step 3: acknowledge immediately
With a reference, a named owner and a date. This single step prevents the majority of escalations.
Step 4: state what happens at each stage
In plain terms, with timescales, so a resident waiting knows whether silence is normal or means they were forgotten.
Step 5: give a named owner
A person rather than a team, which changes both the resident's experience and the likelihood of anything happening.
Step 6: update while it is open
Even to say nothing has changed. Silence is what drives escalation, and it is the cheapest thing on this list to fix.
Step 7: explain the escalation route honestly
The next stage internally and the external route afterwards, published rather than withheld, which builds more trust than concealing it.
Step 8: allow a complaint to be made in writing at any hour
Since people decide to complain in the evening, and a route requiring a telephone call during office hours excludes many of them.
Step 9: handle the vulnerable complainant appropriately
Which is the care described in how to handle sensitive questions in your chatbot.
Step 10: separate the complaint from the underlying problem
Both need to progress, and residents frequently find the complaint is logged while the leak continues unrepaired.
Step 11: close properly
With what was found, what was done and what changes as a result, since a complaint closed without explanation is not closed to the resident.
Step 12: record the themes
Repeated complaints about the same thing are the most useful improvement data an organisation has, and are frequently handled individually and never aggregated.
Step 13: explain what a complaint cannot achieve
Honestly, since some expectations cannot be met and saying so early is better than an outcome that feels like a refusal.
Step 14: let somebody complain on another resident's behalf
Family members, carers and support workers raise a substantial share of complaints, and a process assuming the tenant makes contact excludes exactly the households least able to navigate it alone.
Step 15: acknowledge on the evening it is written
An assistant that makes the route obvious, takes the complaint at any hour, acknowledges it immediately with a reference and a named owner, states the stages and timescales and explains the onward route prevents three weeks of silence becoming four escalations in an afternoon. The charge questions sit in rent and service charge questions from residents, the repair route in repair request and tenancy questions for housing associations, and the general routing in complaint and feedback route questions. See features, start at try, and the sector view sits under property management.