Can we standardise our reporting of Customer Complaints to a % of sales?

B

Bill Pflanz

#11
The first complaint system that I developed actually evolved into what became to be known as a customer quality incident system. When we first started we only tracked complaints and we were fortunate in that not many were being received. What evolved was a system where we started tracking problems that we caught before the customer saw it. The categories and analysis were similar to what Roxane described.

The main categories were Plant (product quality and plant caused errors on shipping, paperwork etc.), Delivery (getting the product to the customer), Internal (order processing, pricing, obtaining requirements), Supplier (quality, delivery etc.)Other (i.e. not fitting other categories) and Customer. The last category refers to the customer causing the problem which was not usually last on the Pareto chart and Plant was not normally first. Actually we found an amazing number of creative ways to cause a problem for a customer between the time it left our gate and arrived at the customer's gate.

The incident rate was based on the number of incidents per number of shipments. It was tracked on a monthly basis with all incidents reviewed in a cross functional product team that included Operations, Sales, Logistics, Purchasing, Order Entry and Quality (me). All customer problems required immediate corrective action but not all incidents resulted in preventative action. The data collected was used to determine if it was a recurring problem or an isolated incident. If it was recurring then an improvement team was formed to determine root cause and find a permanent solution.

Although the product teams and individual plants saw each others incident rates and there was natural competition, the rates were kept separate since it was meant to assist the product teams in improving their business. Whenever a cost of quality (rework, return costs, waste, lost sales etc.) could be determined for the incident then it was also tracked. Higher incident rates for a given problem or high cost could trigger the formation of an improvement team.

Considering that sales is impacted by the economy, competition, and a number of factors that really have nothing to do with customer complaints, I am not sure of the value of having it included in your analysis. The system was in place for almost 10 years and was extremely useful in maintaining good quality and service.

Bill Pflanz
 
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