Outsourced Customer Complaints Department

Your own Outsourced Customer Complaints department solves these issues:

Incoming complaints from consumers and retailers are not being handled by a dedicated team resulting in inconsistencies, this is typical of many smaller food brands.

A single person manages complaints which puts others under pressure when this person is on leave or unavailable. Again common for brands or private label businesses where complaints volumes do not justify more than one resource.

You have an extended team managing customer complaints but think that there is a more efficient solution. A combination of complaints software which is not optimised for food and drink businesses. In our experience QADEX is the only solution that handles the complaints investigation, root cause and corrective action process in a way that is suitable for food and drink businesses.

Complaint levels vary throughout the year resulting in peaks and troughs in resource requirements.

Key points to consider when hiring a complaints outsourcing department

They must have a software solution, if you do not already have one, that is optimised for dealing with food and drink complaints. The QADEX team have over 20 years expertise in handling food and drink complaints for leading businesses.

Food and drink expertise is critical, the QADEX team as you will have guessed only work with food and drink businesses and are very experienced on handling their customer complaints either using the QADEX customer complaints software or customers own software, or a combination of both.

Your complaints outsourcing department must be confident answering consumer questions and queries such as suitability information, ingredients questions or where certain products are stocked. The QADEX team and software enables instant, accurate and assured answers of these questions to ensure customers leave with a positive impression of your brand.

What are the benefits involved with outsourcing? and why do companies outsource?

By using QADEX specialists, your outsourcing service consumers get a higher level of service than can often be provided by in-house resources. Cost savings are often a reality, as every business is under pressure to reduce costs and increase profit margins. The advanced reporting and analytics provided by QADEX provides insights which can be used to deliver reductions in complaint trends and CPMU.

Using QADEX as your complaint outsourcing department is like having a large team of experts always on hand to deliver exceptional service to your consumers.

How will the QADEX outsourced customer complaints team handle issues?

When you outsource complaints handling to us, we agree a bespoke service level agreement (SLA) which is customised to your brand, process and sites ways of working. Key stages covered within the SLA include:

Process setup including adding , removing & changing details of the ranges and products sold to ensure that the outsourced complaints team always have up to date information when a consumer contacts us.

Detailed process defined for handling each type and source of incoming complaint. Typically includes incoming call, emails, website contact forms, retailers and social media. This process also includes enquiries such as where stocked, suitability information, recipe questions.

A separate process for social media complaints may need to agreed as many businesses outsource social media and we often need to liaise closely with the social media team with regards to complaints.

Processes for logging complaints are agreed.

A process for stock and sample management, to include vouchers is agreed.

How to handle serial complainers or threatening and abusing consumers is agreed. QADEX has an advanced analytics capability which will alert you to potential serial complainers at the time a complaint is being logged.

Our role in a product recall is agreed and typically the QADEX complaint outsourcing department are included in your crisis team in the event of a recall.

How complaints are categorised, includng severity and definition of which complaints require investigation and the relevant investigation workflow are agreed. QADEX is the only solution to be able to automate the process of identifying which complaints require investigation, notifying site teams and ensuring that complaints are investigated within your agreed consumer and/or regulator response times.

Following investigation QADEX completely manages the root cause, corrective action and preventive action process ensuring that customer complaints decline substantially over time. Contact us for a CASE STUDY of how a QADEX customer has seen marked year on year improvements in complaint trends attributable to the use of the QADEX complaints software.

A more detailed process is agreed for complaints that could result in legal action and we can link financial outsourcing in the area of voucher management.

All reporting requirements and live dashboards are then agreed and implemented.

How can you be assured that QADEX will provide a high level of customer service?

Talk to us and we will put you in contact with customers who use QADEX as their complaints outsourcing department.

The potential positive outcomes of handling a complaint in the correct manner:

When companies outsource complaints to QADEX there are a number of positive outcomes.

Best of breed customer complaints software is included as part of the solution if required.

The experienced outsourced customer complaints department within QADEX are excellent at talking to consumers and professionally resolving concerns so that customers leave the call, or email communication with a very positive experience of your brand. Come visit us and we will show you many of the letters and emails our care team receive from consumers thanking them for their excellent service.

Some interesting statistics to put this into context.

• 91% of consumers who have a bad experience with your product will simply never return.
• 96% of unhappy consumers will not complain
• A customer who is dissatisfied will tell 9 to 15 people about their bad experience.

What does this mean to your business?

The total number of consumers who are aware of a problem with your product is 200 times the current volume of your complaints. So multiply your current annual volume of complaints by 200 and that is the number of consumers with a bad impression of your product. If you would like to know how our outsourced customer complaints department worked this out Contact Us and use the text box to post the question and we will get back to you with the answer.