"A complaint is not a gift," most people would argue. "On the contrary, a complaint is like a red rag, and needs to be disposed of as quickly as possible."

Yet unhappy customers often do not make an official complaint. Instead they complain to those around them, then terminate their policy at the next opportunity. For the company the reason for their dissatisfaction remains a mystery and there is no chance of getting back onto a good footing with these customers.

If a customer does complain, however, the company has a chance to deal with the complaint properly. "We want to use this second chance to put right things that have gone wrong the first time round," explains Harald Lankisch, Head of Customer Service at Allianz Austria, whose customer care team is responsible for customer and sales feedback.

Within the Allianz Group as a whole, complaint management is an important part of the international Customer Focus Initiative (CFI). "Customers who complain have something to say to us. All we have to do is listen properly," says Markus Schroeder, who heads the CFI. About 25 percent of customers who recommend a company start out as people who have experienced a failure in service, which proves that listening is worth it, he continues.

"Callers can be extremely angry and make their feelings known loudly. They may even use expletives or insult the employee who takes their call," explains Karl-Otto Ludwig, who has worked in the Allianz Austria customer care office for many years. "There is nothing we have not already experienced, from the elderly lady who thought a non-binding quote was an invoice and paid it, to the person who threatened to harm the employee he spoke to."

The key is to stay calm, show the complainant you are listening and follow-through on agreed action. The Austrian team sets itself a tough performance hurdle by ensuring that 95 percent of complaints are dealt with within 24 hours. The pressure is on and the role can be stressful. However, the team aims to both recover the customer relationship and exceed the customer’s expectation during that recovery.

Without Allianz Austria's IT system and its "complaints file," the process would not be nearly so efficient. The whole system is now completely paperless and 100 percent electronic.

"Before we went electronic, the folders we produced each year filled a two-meter-long shelf, and finding anything was nigh on impossible," says Hans Kerstner, who has been on the customer care team for several years. Now each complaint is registered electronically and the employee managing it can refer to it at any time, which is extremely important if they are making follow-up calls to an upset customer.

Going electronic has also made it easy to monitor customer reactions. "For example when the company introduces a new process, we are usually the first to find out if customers are experiencing any problems," explains complaint manager Hans Pum. For this reason, it is particularly important to analyze customer feedback carefully and identify any improvement potential. In fact, it is this skill that earned the Austrian team an excellent reputation within the Allianz Group for customer service.

The fact that the management shows a strong commitment helps, too: regularly, one board member joins the customer care team for a day to talk directly with customers. By doing this, they show that they take customers' concerns seriously and also boost the team's morale.

The Allianz Group is so serious about learning from the second chance gift that legitimate complaints bring that it has introduced a best practice complaint management blueprint to all its companies. 15 companies are part of the initial roll-out.

Allianz Austria contributed to the development of the blueprint. Allianz Ireland and Greece are among the first users. The Irish company had an existing complaint management system. The blueprint allowed them to turn complaints from data logged in the system into opportunities to show customers they were valued and to pinpoint emerging issues. One such issue was customer confusion surrounding the wording of a generic letter used for claims. A redrafting of the letter eliminated both customer confusion and complaints about the matter.

For Allianz Greece, strong management commitment and dedicated staff are ensuring that insights gathered through resolving customer concerns are translated into service improvements. Since introducing the blueprint, complaint resolution has become much faster. Now, 90 percent of complaints are resolved to the customer's satisfaction within two days.

This article was originally published in "Sicher," the Allianz Austria employee magazine.


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