Customer complaints handling system: key issues and concerts

This paper reports a critical examination of the customer complaints handli ng system in a flavourings manufacturer. The findings revealed that the cus tomer complaints, termed areas of concern (AOCs), were not of a recurring n ature but due to the recurrence of root causes, namely manpower and method- related problems. These were due to inadequacies in the AOC handling system (i.e. poor categorization, lack of preventive action follow-up and inadequ ate AOC data analysis) and company environment (i.e. lack of employee motiv ation, inadequate education and training, poor communication and ineffectiv e internal customer-supplier relationships). It was also found that a subst antial number of AOCs arose due to problems at the latter end of the compan y's internal customer-supplier chain. This was partly due to the susceptibi lity of the associated areas to potential errors and also as a consequence of their relative proximity to the external customers. This emphasized the importance of the internal AOC system and its use as a preventive mechanism to eliminate the occurrence of external AOCs.