A complaint takes place when something goes wrong with no one willing to deal with the topic. If a customer fails to express oneself about something that went wrong, the firm stands to lose: an opportunity to improve has been missed. In order to retain existing customers, complaint management should be more than just a system of monitoring customer satisfaction: customers must be encouraged to bring out their concerns in form of complaints.
This study focuses on complaint management from two viewpoints: customer-based and delivery-based complaints. Processes and systems of complaint handling are discussed in context of continuous improvement and problem solving. In addition, methodologies and models supporting employee empowerment are discussed. The main purpose of this study is to create an interface solution to unify communication between a team of operative purchasing and the customer in order to improve data acquisition and utilization within decision-making. The most critical elements of this study pertain to analysing the present state, choosing the correct system for complaint management, and designing documents to support the communication towards both suppliers and customers.
The study was carried out in the form of focused interviews. At an early stage employees from different positions were interviewed for relevant background information. In addition, current processes were studied both from quantitative and qualitative point of view and the performance was evaluated in comparison against two other teams alike. Managerial interviews had an important role in the development process from a strategic point of view. Interviews indicated that complaints were perceived low within the work task hierarchy due to their rareness. Monthly complaint- per-buyer rate was close to zero resulting in lack of motivation. The lack of standardized process practices and supporting documents was also apparent.
This thesis was carried out as a company assignment.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format
