Crushed cases and a credit note
A customer emails photos of shipper cases that failed on their erector: poor creases, cases not squaring up. Customer service forwards it to quality, who ask production which job it was. Someone finds the job, suspects the die-cutter pressure, and the customer gets a credit. Two months later a different customer reports the same fault on a different product.
Each complaint was handled. None of them were connected, and the underlying cause was never fixed.
Complaints are handled, not learned from
Complaints arrive through sales reps, customer service and the customer's quality team, often with photos and a batch label. The information needed to find the cause, such as which job, machine, shift, board delivery and forme, is in the MIS and on job tickets. Linking the two is manual and slow, so it often does not happen.
- Complaints are logged in email or a simple spreadsheet.
- The job and batch are found by hand, if at all.
- Investigations are informal and not recorded.
- Corrective actions are agreed but not followed up.
- Nobody sees patterns across customers and products.
The cost of repeat complaints
Every complaint costs a credit or a reprint and time from quality, production and sales. Repeat faults damage customer confidence far more than single ones, and larger customers track supplier performance. Your own certification audits expect to see complaints investigated and actions closed, and a spreadsheet of credits does not show that. What your quality system requires is for you and your auditor to agree; the software supports it.
Credits also hide the scale of the problem. Finance sees a line of credit notes, production sees a few bad days, and quality sees a list of emails. Nobody sees the total cost of poor quality in one place, so the case for fixing a recurring cause is never made with numbers.
Complaint handling we build
- Complaints are logged from any channel into one register, with photos, the customer's reference and the batch or pallet label details.
- The pallet label or batch code is used to find the job in your MIS automatically, bringing in the machine, shift, operator, board delivery, forme and spec version.
- An investigation form guides quality through containment, cause and action, using your own method such as 5 whys or 8D.
- Corrective and preventive actions are assigned to owners with due dates, and remain open until closed with evidence.
- The customer receives a response drafted from the investigation, approved by quality.
- Reports show complaints by cause, machine, product type, board supplier and customer, so recurring issues are visible.
| Step | Now | With the complaint register |
|---|---|---|
| Logging | Email forwarded around | One register, all channels |
| Finding the job | Manual search | From the pallet label |
| Investigation | Informal | Guided, recorded |
| Actions | Agreed, then forgotten | Owned, dated, closed with evidence |
| Patterns | Invisible | Reports by cause and machine |
From credit notes to fixed causes
Complaints are investigated with the production facts in front of quality within minutes. Actions are tracked until they are done. Recurring causes, such as a particular machine setting or a board supplier's batches, are found and fixed. Audits and customer reviews show a clear, closed loop rather than a list of credits.
Is this how complaints work for you?
- Complaints are handled by email and credit notes.
- Finding the job behind a complaint takes a long time.
- Corrective actions are not tracked to completion.
- The same fault has come back from different customers.
- Complaint reports for audits are assembled by hand.