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A complaint is handled in order — facts, remedy, record, process — and complaints counted by kind show which process most needs fixing.
Paper packet. Every task here also exists on screen, where it is checked automatically; answers written on paper are not assessed by Nydus. When you are back at a device, enter your answers there.
You will handle a complaint in order from the facts to a remedy, a factual record and a process follow-up, match complaints to the step where they started, and count them by kind to find the process to fix.
Standard work, quality checks and checklists all try to stop failures reaching customers. Some always get through. A complaint is one of them, reported by the person who found it, and it is worth more than it feels at the time.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Complaint | A customer's report that a promise was broken. |
| Remedy | Putting it right for that customer: redo, replace, refund. |
| Complaints log | A record of each complaint: date, order, what happened, what was done. |
| Kind | A group of complaints with the same failure, such as late delivery. |
| Pattern | What the log shows when complaints are counted by kind. |
| Process cause | The step where the failure started, not the person on shift. |
When a complaint arrives, owners react: they defend, blame, or pay to make it go away. Each of those skips a step. Handle it instead in a fixed order:
The order matters. Remedy before facts gives money for something not understood. Blaming a person skips the process question entirely, and the same failure happens again to someone else.
Another way: table
One complaint, handled in order.
| Step | Neighborhood Kitchen's late lunch |
|---|---|
| Facts | Order 318, arrived 12:55, meeting started 12:15 |
| Remedy | Apology, delivery refunded, cold dishes re-sent |
| Record | Logged with order number and times |
| Process | Third late delivery this month to the same building |
Another way: steps
A single complaint tells you something went wrong once. Forty complaints, counted by kind, tell you where the business is failing. Neighborhood Kitchen's quarter: 16 about late delivery, 8 about wrong items, 16 about other things. Late delivery is 16 ÷ 40 × 100 = 40 percent of all complaints: one process, scheduling the driver, behind two in every five.
That changes what the owner works on. Apologizing well to each late office is necessary and fixes nothing. Moving the delivery route so the far buildings are served first removes a whole kind of complaint. Match each complaint to the step where it started, not to whoever was on shift. The next lesson is about finding that cause properly.
Thank and listen. 'Thank you for telling me' is the first sentence, whatever the tone of the complaint. Then ask for the facts: which order, what happened, when, what was needed. Reflect them back, as in the listening lesson of the previous course.
Remedy. Put it right in a way that fits the promise that was broken: re-clean the oven, re-send the cold dishes, re-tension the brake. Where money is the right answer, give it, but after the facts.
Record. One line in the log, the same day: date, order or job number, what happened, what was done.
Match to a step. Using the process map, name the step where the failure started.
Count monthly. Group the month's complaints by kind and work out each kind's share.
Check the handling. For each logged complaint, ask: are the facts there, so someone else could find the job? Was a remedy given? Is it matched to a step, not a person? And check the monthly count: the shares must add to a hundred percent.
Getting the facts before the remedy is needed because the remedy must fit the failure. A refund for a late lunch when the real problem was a missing vegetarian box fixes nothing the customer cared about.
Matching to a step rather than a person is allowed, and wiser, because processes produce failures far more often than individuals do. If four different cleaners leave ovens dirty, the cause is in the standard work, not in four bad cleaners.
Counting shares, rather than reading complaints one at a time, is allowed because the share shows which fix would remove the most complaints. The most memorable complaint is rarely the most common one.
A good remedy matches what the customer lost. A late lunch cost the office an awkward meeting, so an apology and a refunded delivery charge fit, and re-sending cold dishes fixes the food. A dirty oven cost the tenant part of a deposit, so a free re-clean before the next inspection fits, and if the deposit was already docked, refunding that amount fits better still.
Decide in advance what front-line staff can offer without asking: a re-do, a refund up to a set amount, a credit on the next order. A customer who is told 'I'll have to check with the owner' waits, and waiting makes the complaint worse. Write the limits down, so the same failure gets the same remedy whoever answers the phone.
Most unhappy customers never complain. They simply do not come back, and they tell friends instead. So every complaint that does arrive stands for several that did not, and a business that makes complaining easy hears about failures it would otherwise only see in falling retention.
Make it easy: a line on the receipt or the job sheet saying 'if anything was not right, tell us at this number', a short follow-up text after a job, a person who answers. Thank people for complaining, and mean it. A business that hears more complaints in the short run usually has fewer failures in the long run, because it knows where to look.
The log is only useful if its entries can be counted and acted on. Use the same few columns for every entry: date, order or job number, what happened in a short phrase, the step where it started, the remedy given. A spreadsheet or a page in a notebook is enough.
Keep the 'what happened' phrase factual and short, and reuse the same words for the same failure, so the month's entries can be grouped: 'late delivery', 'wrong item', 'oven missed'. Leave out opinions about the customer entirely; they cannot be counted and they color how staff treat the next caller.
When a process is changed because of complaints, tell the customers who complained, where you can. 'You told us our deliveries to your building were often late; we have changed the route so your building is now served first.' It costs one message and turns an unhappy customer into one who knows the business listened.
Then count again. If late-delivery complaints were 40 percent of the quarter before the new route and 10 percent after, the fix worked. If they did not fall, the cause was somewhere else, and the next lesson's root-cause method is the way to find it.
Some complaints carry legal rights as well as expectations. Under state law, most goods sold by a business come with an implied warranty that they are fit for their ordinary purpose, and a customer whose new mug cracks in normal use may be entitled to a repair, a replacement or a refund whatever the business's own policy says. State consumer protection laws also govern refund policies and how they must be displayed.
The rules differ by state and change over time. Look up the current rule for the business's state from an official source, such as the state attorney general's consumer protection office, note the source and the date, and make sure the business's remedies never fall below what the law requires.
A complaint often names a person: 'your driver was rude', 'the cleaner missed the oven'. Handle that carefully. Thank the customer, get the facts, and put it right, without agreeing on the spot that the person was at fault. Then talk to the staff member privately, with the facts, and ask what happened from their side.
Often the answer points back at the process: the driver was rushing because the route was overloaded; the oven was not on the cleaner's checklist. Where it really was one person's choice, the feedback lesson later in this course covers how to talk about it. Either way, staff who see complaints used to fix processes rather than to blame them are far more likely to report problems themselves, before a customer has to.
A family dry cleaner in Kansas City kept complaints on scraps of paper by the register, handled each one politely, and never looked at them together. When a new manager started a simple log, the first quarter showed 48 complaints: 22 about missing buttons, 11 about garments not ready on the promised day, and 15 about other things.
Missing buttons were 22 ÷ 48, nearly half of all complaints. Matched to a step, they all started at the same point: buttons were not checked or protected before garments went into the cleaning machine. The fix was a 15-second check at intake, with loose buttons removed and bagged with the ticket.
The next quarter, button complaints fell to 3. The manager also told the regular customers who had complained what had changed. The overall number of complaints halved, and the remaining log pointed to the next process to fix: promising ready dates the cleaning schedule could not always meet.
Under the Uniform Commercial Code, adopted with variations by every state, goods sold by a merchant come with an implied warranty of merchantability: they must be fit for the ordinary purpose for which such goods are used. The Federal Trade Commission's guidance for businesses explains how written warranties and disclaimers interact with it.
A complaint is an attack to be defended. It is free information about a failure the checks missed.
Pay first to make it go away. Remedy without the facts may fix the wrong thing.
Find out who did it. The useful question is which step it started at.
Each complaint is a one-off. Counted by kind, they show the process to fix.
Few complaints means few failures. Most unhappy customers never complain.
Thank her and get the facts.
$\text{when bought; how bagged}$
Before any remedy.
Hear what happened.
$\text{packed under potatoes}$
The fact that matters.
Put it right.
$\text{replacement peaches}$
Fits what she lost.
Record it in the log.
$\text{date; peaches; bruised under potatoes}$
Facts only.
Match it to a step.
$\text{bagging}$
Not to the person bagging.
Thank and get the facts.
$\text{order 318; arrived 12:55; needed 12:15}$
Before anything else.
Put it right.
$\text{apology; delivery refunded; cold dishes re-sent}$
Fits the loss.
Record it in the log.
$\text{date; order 318; late delivery; refund}$
One line, facts.
Match it to a step.
$\text{scheduling the driver}$
The process cause.
Count the quarter's log.
$16 \div 40 \times 100 = 40$
Late delivery's share.
Fix the process.
$\text{far buildings served first}$
A whole kind removed.
Thank and get the facts.
$\text{which apartment; what the inspector said}$
Before any remedy.
Put it right.
$\text{free oven re-clean}$
Before the next inspection.
Record it in the log.
$\text{date; job; oven missed; re-clean}$
Facts only.
Read the log.
$5 \text{ oven complaints in two months}$
From four cleaners.
Match them to a step.
$\text{oven not in the standard work}$
Left to judgment.
Fix the process.
$\text{oven added, with a standard}$
The cause removed.
Count the complaints again.
$0 \text{ oven complaints the next two months}$
The fix worked.
Get the facts.
$\text{job 214; cable loose after 20 miles}$
Which job, what happened.
Put it right and record it.
$\text{free re-fit; logged with the job number}$
Remedy, then record.
Match it to a step.
An office calls Neighborhood Kitchen: their lunch arrived 40 minutes late. Put the owner's handling in order.
Number the steps in order (write the number in the box):
Complete the worked solution: Bright Home Cleaning logged $25$ complaints last quarter. $8$ were about a missed area, such as the oven or the baseboards, and $4$ about a cleaner arriving late; the rest were about other things. Find the share of missed-area complaints, the share of late-arrival complaints, and the number of other complaints.
Find the missed-area share.
$(\text{missed area}) \div (\text{all}) \times \text{a hundred} =$ p
That kind out of every hundred.
Find the late-arrival share.
$(\text{late}) \div (\text{all}) \times \text{a hundred} =$ q
The same for the second kind.
Find the number of other complaints.
$(\text{all}) - (\text{missed area}) - (\text{late}) =$ o
Whatever is left.
Say which process to look at first.
$\text{the step behind the largest share}$
One fix removes the most complaints.
A client tells Bright Home Cleaning that the oven was left dirty after a move-out clean $4$ days ago. What should the owner say first?
Entries from Northside Repairs' complaints log. Mark every entry that records facts the shop could act on.
This task has no paper form; do it on a device.
Maya's four complaints this season. Match each to the step of her process where it started.
| Packing | Glazing | Taking the order | Scheduling the firings | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A cup arrived cracked | ||||
| The glaze color did not match the sample | ||||
| The order went to the wrong café | ||||
| The set arrived a week late |
Neighborhood Kitchen logged $160$ complaints last year, and $25$ percent of them were about late delivery. A new delivery route is expected to halve late deliveries. How many complaints a year should it prevent? Fill in each figure on the sheet.
| Amount | |
|---|---|
| Late-delivery complaints | |
| Complaints the fix prevents |
A heating and cooling contractor in Houston finds from its complaints log that about $3$ customers a month complain that the technician missed the promised arrival window. Each is given a $80$-dollar credit on the bill. How many dollars a year do these credits cost?
Answer:
A takeout restaurant logged $20$ complaints last month. $15$ of them were about missing items from delivery orders. Complete the sentence.
Missing items made up p percent of last month's complaints.
Lesson test: one question per skill, one attempt each, no hints. Your answers are checked when you submit.
Neighborhood Kitchen's log for the quarter holds $40$ complaints: $16$ about late delivery, $7$ about wrong items and the rest about other things. Fill in each kind's share, as a percentage.
| Complaints | Share, percent | |
|---|---|---|
| Late delivery | 16 | |
| Wrong items | 7 | |
| Other | 17 |
You can turn a complaint from something to survive into information that fixes a process. Tell someone why 'find out who did it' is the wrong first question. Next: finding the cause in the process.
20. Your turn: Northside Repairs' loose brake cable, step 3
$\text{fitting brake cables}$
The process cause.