Episode 28 – Part 2 – Why is a good Complaints Handling Process important in surveying? with Christine O’Rourke, RICS

The following transcript is autogenerated so may contain errors.

Matt Nally  

Well, what does a good complaints handling procedure look like? Because I’m sure I’m sure you’ve seen many. So there must be some ones that they’re really good. And they’ve obviously put a lot into it. And there’s others that potentially maybe don’t meet the standard, or just very bare minimum, which potentially causes problems data. So is there a good sort of level of complaints handling procedure?

Christine O’Rourke 

Yeah, so what what we recommend, and there is an example on the website, if if people want to go and look at it, we recommend really kind of two stages. So usually, a complaints handling procedure will suggest that you raise it first with the person that you’re complaining about directly. But then once you get into the sort of formal complaint, we suggest that wherever possible, you have a named Person in the firm who looks after complaints. Usually someone pretty senior, that doesn’t mean that they have to do all of the kinds of investigation or anything else, but but they’re the person that’s responsible, that they’re that they’re named in the complaints handling procedure, and that the client can go knows how to contact them. The other thing about that stage is that I would give it a timescale. You don’t want that to be too long. Equally, you don’t want it to be too short. Usually, it’s about two weeks, you know, it would give that gives you an opportunity to really properly look at the complaint. The other thing that I would say you don’t have to say it in your complaints handling procedure is when you put in a timescale, if you’re going to miss the timescale, that’s okay. You know, sometimes complaints need more investigation, just let the complainant know. And give them an idea of how much longer it will be. And then we recommend that after that first step, your next step is to go straight to ADR. So to give details of your ADR provider, your alternative dispute resolution provider, so that the you know, so that the client knows where they can go next, we sometimes see examples where there are lots more stages than that. I’m not convinced that works very well, I think what you want to do with a client with a complaint is really deal with it. Well, to start with within the firm, and then, you know, offer that independence to look at it a second time. I think complaints that have lots and lots of stages really can feel like you’re just trying to delay, the client being able to go to somewhere external. And I don’t think that that’s helpful, really, if the, if the client isn’t happy, when you’ve dealt with it first time, the chances are that several more people looking at it is not going to be ideal. The place where it can be tricky is if it’s a very small firm, particularly of course sole practitioners, you know, you you won’t have anyone else to, to look at the complaint. You almost certainly we’ll just have to deal with your own complaints. Sometimes if you have a kind of office manager or somebody like that, you know, you could have them named as the person to make complaints to sometimes it’s very difficult for people isn’t it to complain to the person who’s provided the service. Some of us are quite uncomfortable kind of raising things with with people directly. So if you do have somebody who you know, can act as a place where clients can go, if they’re unhappy with the person that’s done the work, even if you know it’s somebody like your office manager, that’s that’s really helpful. The thing that we sometimes see that I’m never completely sure about is a complaints handling procedure for a sole practitioner might suggest somebody outside the firm, so maybe another local surveyor or somebody else that that’s sort of connected to the firm somehow. I’m, there’s nothing wrong with that. You can do it if you want to. I think it’s better personally to keep it inside the firm. I think it’s you know, I think that if you if you want to involve someone to help you to look at complaints with a, with a clear eye, that’s absolutely fine. You know, for all of us, I think it’s really hard isn’t it to, to handle complaints about our own behaviour that feels really uncomfortable. And so if you want to ask somebody else to take a look and give you a second opinion, that’s fine. But in your complaints handling procedure, I would usually suggest that it’s, it’s your firm that looks at it first.

Matt Nally

That’s a very good point, actually. Because I think, I think you’re right, it’s good to, particularly as a sole practitioner, have someone you can refer to and check that you’re being objective about it, because they’re not gonna have any of that emotional attachment to the situation. But for your customer, they, they’re gonna want to feel that they’re dealing with your firm, not getting fobbed off almost somewhere else that doesn’t know the ins and outs, potentially. So I think that’s a very fair point. The other one is, as you say, communication is so important. And if you if you don’t like the delay to the process, for example, but if you’re not clear at any point, as to what’s going on, or what will happen, and just very factual and taking the emotion out of it, then then it’s likely to get escalated, isn’t it? I think at that point, yeah,

Christine O’Rourke 

I think that’s the thing. And you know, the other thing that we always suggest is that you acknowledge a complaint, and that if you think somebody has a complaint, treat it as a complaint, don’t, you know, I’ve sometimes seen very convoluted circumstances where somebody’s clearly not happy with something that’s happened, you know, they’re phoning or they’re emailing. And rather than just saying, oh, something’s gone wrong here. Let’s look at it using our complaints handling process. The firm sort of says, Oh, well, they didn’t, you know, they didn’t write to the right person under the complaint handling process, saying they had a complaint. So therefore, we didn’t use a complaints handling process. Your complaint handling process is supposed to be something which is there to help you and the client to resolve difficulties or problems or misunderstandings. It’s not a kind of, you know, an annoying secret thing that, you know, only people with the right combination of of steps are allowed to use, you know, on the whole complaints handled well, can be a really positive thing. You know, I’ve, I’ve dealt with businesses where, when I’ve had a complaint, and it’s been acknowledged, and you know, where something has gone wrong, people have put it right. That makes you feel more positive about the business, actually. Yeah,

Matt Nally

it’s a very good point. There’s this there are stats about I can’t come up with an answer a long time since I looked, but about if you handle a complaint in the right way, you can end up with a more loyal customer. Someone that hadn’t complained, but obviously we get it wrong, completely the opposite.

Christine O’Rourke

And I guess that’s the thing, isn’t it is that, you know, the best complaints have the best written complaints handling policy in the world is not going to help you if your response as a business to getting a complaint is defensive. And yeah, I mean, I understand, you know, I think all of us who deal with the public know that sometimes complainants can be completely unreasonable sometimes. I mean, very rarely, in my experience, but you do sometimes come across people who have an agenda who aren’t, you know, being fair, or you just find people who, you know, for whatever reason, are angry or mistrustful or, you know, have unreasonable expectations of what a business can do. And there’s nothing that you can do that is going to prevent that happening. You know, I’m, I know that our ICS members sometimes get crossed with us about, you know, us requiring them to have complaints handling procedures, because they have to deal with these, you know, sometimes they have to deal with very difficult circumstances and they feel not unreasonably that that’s very personal that someone you know, that they’ve taken care and pride in providing a professional service, and someone has come back and complained about it unreasonably. But that is human behaviour. And all of us that provide any kind of service will deal with the public. That is just something that happens sometimes. And the more that, I think you said earlier, you can divorce yourself from the emotion of it, and see this as an opportunity to, you know, check the facts if something’s gone wrong, but it right if it hasn’t explained why you don’t think something has gone wrong. That’s the way that you need to handle complaints. You know, if you if you stomp in with the with the feeling that it’s unreasonable of someone to have complained, even if it is, your complaints handling is probably going to get wrong pretty quickly.

Matt Nally

I think it’s a really good point there actually, which is it’s separating, and this might not be the case but separating the idea of a complaint potentially being similar to a claim. I feel it feeling the same level of frustration or emotion tional annoyance at it. And ultimately looking at the complaints handling procedure is not as a tool to help customers get to a claim, but as a tool to help you de escalate something into a an amicable outcome for everyone. And it’s just reframing the idea of what the complaints handling process is, therefore, that it’s a positive thing rather than a negative, I think, yeah, yeah.

Christine O’Rourke

I mean, I, you know, it doesn’t always feel positive. And you do always have to be aware of the fact that, you know, something could become a claim, and you have to do the right thing in terms of telling your insurer and, you know, making sure that that you’ve kept that lens on it as well. But actually, what most people want, when they complain is for their problems to be sorted out. Yeah, whatever that might look like. Sometimes people just want an apology. Yeah.

Matt Nally

And it can be that simple. And it’s over. It’s is that the thing that you see this? My final question, I think on this is, what’s the common cause of something escalating from a complaint into a claim or going into the ADR process is, do you find that many of them could have been prevented earlier? If they’ve been dealt with differently other claims that complaint stage? Or is it a case of they were the chairman on the whole their right to have escalated beyond that point?

Christine O’Rourke

I mean, to be fair, I think that the data we have from our ADR providers, suggests that our firms generally do a pretty good job of handling complaints. You know, there will be a lot of the cases that go to ADR are about allegations that something’s been missed in a in a home survey, or that, you know, evaluation has maybe not taken account of the right comparables and things like that. And that’s either because people have, you know, people have found something later when they’ve moved into a property that wasn’t there to be seen when the sphere was fair, or perhaps because, you know, they’ve moved to wardrobe and found something. And we all know that surveyors doing a home survey aren’t going to go around moving the furniture, or, you know, they’ve, they’ve taken off wallpaper and found something underneath it, you know, it’s all of those. It’s those sorts of things where, actually, you know, when the surveyor looks at the complaint, they’re absolutely right to say, Well, no, sorry, that wasn’t something that was our fault. Yeah. But of course, the, the homeowner is now looking at expensive repairs, or whatever. And they are going to be crossed that they didn’t know about that beforehand. And those are often the the cases that go to ADR, but the fact that something goes to ADR doesn’t mean that there is a claim that there’s a valid point, it probably just means that someone’s got an awful lot of emotion invested in it, and is prepared to take the firm’s word for something

Matt Nally

interesting. Okay. So yeah, so again, not always a negative to be going into ADR, it’s, yeah, that’s that’s also a good point to remember in that process.