Complaint Management in a Customer-Oriented Firm

Abstract

Complaint management is of great importance for companies in two ways. On the one hand, it takes the dissatisfied customers as a target group and has the central task of stabilizing customer relationships at risk due to dissatisfaction, thereby avoiding customer losses. In this respect, it holds great strategic potential in customer relationship management. This is particularly true considering the fact that a strategy of minimizing dissatisfaction usually proves to be more profitable than the strategy preferred by most companies of maximizing the satisfaction of already satisfied customers. On the other hand, complaint management provides valuable information input for quality management, because complaints contain relevant information about the quality defects perceived by customers and their unfulfilled expectations. Complaint information can be used for the improvement of products, services and processes. Therefore, complaint management also has high strategic potential in quality management and is an essential element of all important concepts concerning quality management and business excellence, such as DIN ISO 9001, the EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) Excellence Model or the Baldrige Excellence Framework.