Vol. 2 :: No. 09 August, 2000 (Shrawan-Bhadra)

Management

How Japanese Work

Complaint Handling

By Madan Lamsal

Some young and professional journalists from print media ran a news program on Nepal Television. But they could not run it for more than two months. The reason was not that the program was not good but their presentation was not appealing as well as alluring. They were time and again suggested to change the presentation. But they did not care about it. Rather they admonished their viewers who made the complaints. Even though the news reports were good, because of its failure to attract viewers they were unable to get enough sponsors to run the program. Ultimately they had to go off the screen only four weeks ago.

The message is that if complaints of customers are not handled properly and timely, the loser will be none other but the company itself. It is so both in manufactured products as well as in services.

Generally, a product or service is immediately forgotten by the producer once it is being sold. But if a company is to make products that customers want, its responsibility would be to find out the customers’ reaction about its products or services, compared with those of its competitors.

There can be different types of complaints. It may be about the quality, delivery dates, price of the product and the like. Grievances may also be about the wrong product delivered to or defects in the product. Similarly, complaints may be about individual products or product lots. Complaints may also be due to poor inspection, poor production process, poor after- sales service or poor methods.

In absence of proper response and follow up about complaints, the company loses its customers who are valuable to them. Take the example of Janakpur Cigarette Factory (JCF) whose cigarettes used to be sold throughout Nepal and were so much in demand that the dealers or retailers were required to make advance payments. They had to queue up in a line to get Yak and Gaida brands. But unfortunately the attitude of the officials of the company was like that of 'zemindars'. They never listened to the woes of their customers who were not getting stocks in time and in an easy manner. In the meantime Surya Tobacco Company (STC) entered the market and paid attention to every complaint that their customers made. And soon STC left JCF far behind in the market in terms of sales. However, lately JCF seems to have realized the past mistake. This fair competition has really prodded JCF to review their attitude towards customers. Therefore, the company staff are becoming little more customer friendly who are getting quick to respond to the complaints of its customers. But RNAC still does not seem to have realized the importance of complaint handling. Same is the case with most other public enterprises. This may be because they have to face no competition. Such companies fail to stand competition when it arises.

In many cases complaints involve money. For example, customers may claim financial compensation or replacement of products if a product breaks down or does not meet the terms of a purchase contract. For this reason, sales staff tend to adopt the attitude that dealing with complaints means refunding part of the purchase price or exchanging the defect product with a new one. But in Japanese management, complaint handling is more than that. In Japanese style of management where quality control is a central theme, complaint handling is not limited to complaints accompanied by claims, but extends to all types of consumer dissatisfactions that may be accompanied by claims or not.

Old styled companies try to hush up complaints as much as they can, but companies practising quality control do exactly the opposite. They see how much information on complaints and dissatisfaction (latent and actual complaints) they can collect, how many latent complaints they can bring into the open, and how well they can listen to their customers.

While handling complaints, Japanese experts suggest following two major aspects to consider:

1. Internal aspect: Recurrence prevention by eliminating the symptom, immediate cause and root causes, handling the accounting side by instituting a system of accountability and disposition of products about which complaints have been made.

2. External aspect: Keeping the customer satisfied which requires speed, sincerity, prevention of recurrence, and sound investigation.

Experts say that if priority is given to recurrence prevention, the quality of the company’s products in terms of satisfying consumer requirements will gradually rise. The process consists of redesigning the quality of products with the help of feedback obtained from market research and complaints received, improving process control and inspection methods, and improving overall quality.

If this is not done, all the staff – whether design, technical, workplace, inspection or other – will become complacent. They will concentrate on quality characteristics that do not really concern users. They will remain ignorant of characteristics that are actually causing users problems. As a result, their products will gradually become unusable.

Many companies in Nepal fulfil the formalities only when complaints are received, more especially when the complaints involve monetary value. They make no effort to bring hidden complaints to the surface. The most serious thing is that the opinions of people who want to complain do not reach those in the company who really need to hear them. It is also true that complaints are often not dealt with carefully and considerately enough, which may turn later into product liability problems. This problem is reported to be more prominent in Nepal’s insurance companies including Rastriya Beema Sansthan.

No complaints received does not necessarily indicate that quality is satisfactory. Company should rather take it as a danger signal. Because, it may be that customers may have resigned themselves to poor quality and regarded it as pointless to complain.

Therefore, for reliable complaints handling, Japanese experts suggest following actions:

• Formulating complaints handling regulations and drawing up a flow chart.
• Designing standard report forms and listing the items to be investigated for each product. These should include the product name, the circumstances surrounding the complaint, the condition of the use, the place of the use, the name of the user, the date of occurrence of the fault, the date of completion of the report, the history of the product (date of manufacture, lot number, etc), the date when the product was received, the method of transport, the quantity, price, technical details of the complaints, the inspection method used by the recipient of the product, the inspection criteria, the apparent causes, emergency measures taken, recurrence, prevention action, whether or not the defective article was returned etc.
• Setting up a special complaints section
• Deciding who is to screen complaints and notifying the departments responsible for dealing with them, and how this is to be done.
• Designating a department in charge of preparing complaint statistics, reporting top management, and making recommendations to other departments.

These actions may form a very good starting point in developing a well-organized complaint handling management.

Based on AOTs Training Course

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