How to collect complaint data from customers

[John Broomfield]

Silex,

How about quickly offering a free return and replacement so your designers can examine what is wrong?

Make sure this complaint resolution measure is included in the design of your services that precede, surround and follow-up on your manufactured goods.

Right now you are missing out on great opportunities to create loyal customers while making your products better.

Best wishes,

John

 

[rstocum]

There used to be a similar problem at my current employer. Top management made the decision that sales would hand off quality issues to the compliance manager (me) as soon as the sales contact conversation turned into a discussion of non-conformance. Mere complaints, like "I didn't get a pack slip", or "the skid wasn't as nice as I usually get", are entered in a complaint database by sales. I get all the contacts who want to do a return, get credit, or scrap/rework product. That way, I gather the information needed, and If additional information is required, I can get back in touch with whoever I spoke to at the customer. This SOP is working pretty well so far.

 

[Silex7]

It is fundamental to the effectiveness of an FMEA that a cross-functional team be used to determine potential causes of failure. I'm not surprised, therefore that you are having issues and trying to fight a "rear guard" action, when only 2 people were involved in the deployment of this really useful preventive measure. I'd recommend you go back to basics and do the PFMEA/Control plan correctly.

Deeply sorry for my delayed answer. I meant the two persons ( myself and the production manager) are responsible for managing the FMEA,but it's actually involve all the 70 workers , it covers each single step operated inside the production site, so that no risk/ claiming source could be arise, sure that PFMEA is a complementary plan.

 

[Silex7]

Silex,

How about quickly offering a free return and replacement so your designers can examine what is wrong?

Make sure this complaint resolution measure is included in the design of your services that precede, surround and follow-up on your manufactured goods.

Right now you are missing out on great opportunities to create loyal customers while making your products better.

Best wishes,

John

Thank you John for your suggestion I couldn't agree more with that. But in my case it could be something related to the customer's production process, it's not a one end product use, actually most of our claims we receive we found them to be due to mis-use by customer in his own process ( using wrong chemical treatment/ wrong agents/ wrong temperature/...etc) so there are many factors we usually investigate also by customer's feedback, otherwise I can not convict my own product without detailed study.

 

[Mikey324]

We have a Customer Claim Policy. We list the responsibilities and expectations from our side, and those we expect of the customer. We are upfront about the necessary minimum information we need to start an investigation. This way, we are GENERALLY given what we need from the start.
This is something we explain to the customer when we are working out contract details. Everyone stays happy when we all know what to expect.