A complaint arrives on a busy Tuesday
It might be an email to an adviser, a letter in the post, or something said on a phone call that, on reflection, was a complaint. The adviser mentions it to the compliance lead. The compliance lead adds it to the spreadsheet and sends an acknowledgement. Then the day continues.
The firm's procedure sets deadlines for each stage. The compliance lead has them in their head. They also have a holiday booked next month. Nobody else is quite sure where the file is or when the final response is due.
Why complaint handling is fragile
Firms that receive few complaints do not build a process around them, which is understandable. But complaints are time-bound, and they arrive in unpredictable ways. Expressions of dissatisfaction said on the phone can go unrecorded because the person taking the call did not recognise them.
- Complaints arrive through several channels, some informal.
- Deadlines are calculated by hand.
- Correspondence is stored in individual mailboxes.
- Only one person knows the status of each case.
- Reporting is assembled by hand when needed.
Because complaints are infrequent, the procedure is often in a document nobody has opened for months. The person handling the complaint looks up the steps each time, works out the dates by hand and writes letters from old examples, which is slow and leaves room for small mistakes.
What goes wrong
| Gap | Consequence |
|---|---|
| Complaint not recognised as one | Not logged, clock running unnoticed |
| Deadline worked out wrongly | Response late |
| Owner away | Case stalls |
| Letters in personal inboxes | Incomplete file |
| No trend reporting | Same root cause repeats |
A late or poorly recorded response turns a manageable complaint into a harder one. And without a register that shows patterns, a recurring cause can go unnoticed.
There is also the effect on the person handling it. A complaint is stressful, particularly when the adviser involved is a colleague. Working out dates and chasing paperwork by hand adds to that pressure at exactly the wrong moment.
The complaints register we build
- Staff log a complaint in a short form from anywhere, including a prompt on calls and emails where words suggest dissatisfaction, which a person then confirms or dismisses.
- Each complaint gets its timeline calculated from your firm's own procedure, with every stage date shown.
- The owner, and a named backup, receive reminders ahead of each stage.
- Correspondence, call notes and documents are stored with the complaint, not in personal mailboxes.
- Your standard letters are pre-filled from the complaint record, for the owner to edit and approve.
- Reports show open complaints, stage deadlines, outcomes and root causes, in the format your firm uses.
The register organises and reminds. It does not decide whether a complaint is upheld, what the response says or what redress is offered. Those are your firm's decisions.
What the firm gets from it
Every complaint is logged with its deadlines visible. The file is complete in one place, so a colleague can pick it up if the owner is away. Letters take less time to draft. And the firm can see root causes over time, which is where the real improvement comes from.
Staff who take calls also get better at spotting complaints, because the prompts show them what to look for. That early recognition means the clock and the record start at the right point, instead of the complaint being logged a week later when someone realises what the call was.
The register also helps with the quieter job of learning from complaints. Root causes recorded consistently make it possible to see, over a year, whether complaints cluster around a product, a process or a stage of the client journey.
Is your complaint handling like this?
- Complaints are logged in a spreadsheet.
- Deadlines are worked out by hand.
- Complaint correspondence sits in personal inboxes.
- Only one person knows each case's status.
- You have no view of recurring causes.