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Episode 28 – Part 2 – Why is a good Complaints Handling Process important in surveying? with Christine O’Rourke, RICS
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In PART 2 of this week's episode, we speak with Christine O'Rourke from RICS about why a good Complaints Handling Process is important.
Across the three parts of this episode, we are discussing how professional conduct, complaints handling and dispute resolution are tied together and how they are positive tools for helping you provide a great service.
Christine develops professional conduct, ethical and competence standards. This uses her experience of working with different professions, regulatory casework, analysing information and making and communicating difficult decisions to support members of RICS and regulated firms in delivering high standards of service and responsible business.
In Part 2 of this episode, we discuss:
🤝 Which parties the CHP applies to in a transaction
📚 The benefits of a two-stage complaints handling procedure
😡 What does a good CHP contain?
🧩 Should you keen complaints handling internal or use external help as an SME
💭 Reframing complaints as opportunities for amicable outcomes
✅ The importance of checking facts
Recommended
Transcript
Importance of Complaints Handling
00:00:00
Speaker
Yeah, should we talk about, I suppose, what a complaints handling procedure is first and then how you set it up? Yeah, absolutely. So RICS requires for all of our regulated firms and for our registered valuers that they have a complaints handling process. And that's not unusual. Almost all businesses that you deal with will have some kind of complaints handling process.
00:00:24
Speaker
It's good for it to be public. We would suggest that it's on someone's website so that when somebody, something goes wrong, you know, clients know what they can do. And I suppose the other important thing to say is that the people who are entitled to use your complaints handling process for RICS are the people who are your clients. So you have a contract to provide services with or you owe a duty of care to. So, you know, if you have a party that's on the other side of the transaction
00:00:53
Speaker
they're not entitled to use your complaints handling process.
Extending Complaints Process to Non-Clients
00:00:57
Speaker
We quite often get questions from firms about the other side, the other side's client is asking me to provide my complaints handling process, do I have to do it? And my advice on that is always send it to them because it's good practice, it shows that you have a complaints handling process, but explain that
00:01:18
Speaker
you know, it applies only to your clients and people to your duty of care. And so that's not something that's available to, you know, the other side of the transaction. So that's really important to know that you don't, you know, not everybody in the world is entitled to use your complaints handling process.
00:01:37
Speaker
It's a very interesting point, actually. I'd only thought of it from the client's perspective. Obviously, there are multiple parties sometimes in a process. I haven't thought about that at all, so that's a very interesting point. Are there scenarios where there might have been an impact on another party involved where they could use it, or is it always for sort of clients? Yeah, so sometimes we... Well, so not where they can use the compliance handling procedure.
00:02:03
Speaker
We'll go on to talk about ADR in a little bit.
Role of ADR in Complaints Handling
00:02:05
Speaker
And ADR is a really important part of the complaint handling procedures that we require our firms to have. And obviously that comes at a cost to our firms because ADR is an external process that has to be funded. And so that's why we say that your complaint handling procedure only applies to your clients or people you owe a duty of care to. Now, that doesn't mean that if somebody
00:02:33
Speaker
outside that group of people complains about you, you can just ignore that. They could have a right, for example, to complain to our ICS if what they're complaining about is professional misconduct. So for example, if somebody, the classic example we give is somebody's gone to do a home survey,
00:02:59
Speaker
on behalf of a prospective buyer while they're there, the homeowner alleges that they were rude or, you know, they broke something. As a responsible business, you're going to want to deal with that complaint. You just don't have to put it through your formal complaints handling procedure and offer them the opportunity of ADR.
Designing an Effective Complaints Procedure
00:03:18
Speaker
But we would still think that as a professional, as a business, you would want to look into that. And if something has gone wrong, look at how you can put it right.
00:03:28
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, so it's not just a case of, yeah, don't worry about everything else. Yeah. Yeah. What does a good complaint handling procedure look like? I'm sure you've seen many. So there must be some ones that are really good and they've obviously put a lot into it. And there's others that potentially maybe don't meet the standard or just very bare minimum, which potentially causes problems later. So is there a good sort of level of complaint handling procedure?
00:03:56
Speaker
Yeah, so what we recommend, and there is an example on the website, if people want to go and look at it, we recommend really kind of two stages. So usually a complaint handling procedure will suggest that you raise it first with the person that you're complaining about directly. But then once you get into the sort of formal complaint, we suggest that wherever possible you have
00:04:25
Speaker
a named person in the firm who looks after complaints. Usually someone pretty senior, that doesn't mean that they have to do all of the kind of investigation or anything else, but they're the person that's responsible, that they're named in the complaint's handling procedure and that the client can go, knows how to contact them. The other thing about that stage is that I would give it a time scale. You don't want that to be
00:04:53
Speaker
too long, equally you don't want it to be too short. Usually it's about two weeks. That gives an opportunity to really properly look at the complaint. The other thing that I would say you don't have to say it in your complaints handling procedure is when you put in a time scale, if you're going to miss the time scale, that's okay. Sometimes complaints need more investigation. Just let the complainant know.
00:05:22
Speaker
and give them an idea of how much longer it will be. Then we recommend that after that first step, your next step is to go straight to ADR. To give details of your ADR provider, your alternative dispute resolution provider, so that the client knows where they can go next. We sometimes see examples where there are lots more stages than that.
00:05:48
Speaker
I'm not convinced that works very well. I think what you want to do with a client with a complaint is really deal with it well to start with within the firm and then offer that independence to look at it a second time. I think complaints that have lots and lots of stages really can feel like you're just trying to delay the client being able to go to somewhere external.
Complaints Handling for Sole Practitioners
00:06:15
Speaker
And I don't think that that's helpful really. If the client isn't happy when you've dealt with it first time, the chances are that several more people looking at it is not going to be ideal. The place where it can be tricky is if it's a very small firm, particularly of course, sole practitioners. You won't have anyone else to look at the complaint. You almost certainly will just have to deal with your own complaint.
00:06:45
Speaker
Sometimes if you have a kind of office manager or somebody like that, you know, you could have them named as the person to make complaints to. Sometimes it's very difficult for people, isn't it, to complain to the person who's provided the service. Some of us are quite uncomfortable kind of raising things with people directly. So if you do have somebody who, you know, can act as a place where clients can go if they're unhappy with the person that's done the work.
00:07:11
Speaker
even if it's somebody like your office manager, that's really helpful. The thing that we sometimes see that I'm never completely sure about is a complaint's handling procedure for a sole practitioner might suggest somebody outside the firm. So maybe another local surveyor or somebody else that's sort of connected to the firm somehow. There's nothing wrong with that. You can do it if you want to.
00:07:41
Speaker
Um, I think it's better personally to keep it inside the firm. I think it's, you know, I think that if you, if you want to involve someone to help you to look at complaints with a, with a clear eye, that's absolutely fine. You know, for all of us, I think it's really hard, isn't it, to, to handle complaints about our own behavior that feels really uncomfortable. Um, and so if you want to ask somebody else to take a look and give you a second opinion, that's fine, but in your complaints handling procedure,
00:08:10
Speaker
I would usually suggest that it's your firm that looks at it first.
Impact of Complaints Handling on Customer Loyalty
00:08:15
Speaker
That's a very good point, actually. Because I think you're right. It's good to, particularly as a sole practitioner, have someone you can refer to and check that you're being objective about it. Because they're not going to have any of that emotional attachment to the situation. But for your customer, they're going to want to feel that they're dealing with your firm not getting fobbed off almost to somewhere else that doesn't know the ins and outs potentially. So I think that's a very fair point. I think the other one is, as you say, communication is so important. And if you don't
00:08:45
Speaker
today to the process, for example, but if you're not clear at any point as to what's going on or what will happen and just very factual and taking the emotion out of it, then it's likely to get escalated, isn't it? I think at that point. Yeah, I think that's the thing. And the other thing that we always suggest is that you acknowledge a complaint and that if you think somebody has a complaint, treat it as a complaint. I've sometimes seen very convoluted circumstances where
00:09:14
Speaker
somebody's clearly not happy with something that's happened. You know, they're phoning or they're emailing and rather than just saying, oh, something's gone wrong here. Let's look at it using our complaints handling process. The firm sort of says, oh, well, they didn't, you know, they didn't write to the right person under the complaint handling process saying they had a complaint. So therefore we didn't use the complaints handling process. Your complaint handling process is supposed to be something which is there to help you and the client to resolve
00:09:44
Speaker
difficulties or problems or misunderstandings. It's not an annoying secret thing that only people with the right combination of steps are allowed to use. On the whole, complaints handled well can be a really positive thing. I've dealt with businesses where when I've had a complaint and it's been acknowledged and where something has gone wrong, people have put it right.
00:10:14
Speaker
That makes you feel more positive about the business, actually. Yeah, it's a very good point. There are stats about, I can't remember them now, it's a long time since I looked, but about if you handle a complaint in the right way, you can end up with a more loyal customer than someone that hadn't complained, but obviously if you get it wrong, completely the opposite.
De-escalation and the Nature of Complaints
00:10:32
Speaker
And I guess that's the thing, isn't it? Is that, you know, the best complaints, the best written complaints handling policy in the world is not going to help you if your response
00:10:42
Speaker
as a business to getting a complaint is defensive. And I mean, I understand, you know, I think all of us who deal with the public know that sometimes complainants can be completely unreasonable. Sometimes, I mean, very rarely in my experience, but you do sometimes come across people who have an agenda who aren't, you know, being fair, or you just find people who
00:11:04
Speaker
you know, for whatever reason are angry or mistrustful or, you know, have unreasonable expectations of what a business can do. And there's nothing that you can do that is going to prevent that happening. You know, I know that RICS members sometimes get cross with us about, you know, us requiring them to have complaints handling procedures because they have to deal with these, you know, sometimes they have to deal with very difficult
00:11:34
Speaker
circumstances, and they feel not unreasonably that that's very personal, that someone, you know, that they've taken care and pride in providing a professional service. And someone has come back and complained about it unreasonably. But that is human behavior. And all of us that provide any kind of service will deal with the public. That is just something that happens sometimes. And the more that I think you said earlier, you can divorce yourself from the emotion of it.
00:12:03
Speaker
and see this as an opportunity to check the facts. If something's gone wrong, put it right. If it hasn't explained why you don't think something has gone wrong. That's the way that you need to handle complaints. If you stomp in with the feeling that it's unreasonable of someone to have complained, even if it is, your complaint handling is probably gonna get wrong pretty quickly.
00:12:30
Speaker
I think it's a really good point, though, actually, which is it's separating. And this might not be the case, but separating the idea of a complaint potentially being similar to a claim, I feel it feeling the same level of frustration or emotional annoyance at it. And ultimately, looking at the complaint-standing procedure is not as a tool to help customers get to a claim, but as a tool to help you de-escalate something into an amicable
00:12:59
Speaker
outcome for everyone. Yeah. And it's just reframing the idea of what the complaint handling process is there for. And it's a positive thing rather than a negative, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't always feel positive. And you do always have to be aware of the fact that, you know, something could become a claim and you have to do the right thing in terms of telling your insurer and, you know, making sure that that you've kept that lens on it as well. But actually, what most
00:13:28
Speaker
people want when they complain is for their problem to be sorted out. Yeah. Whatever that might look like. Sometimes people just want an apology. Yeah. And it can be that simple and it's over. Yeah. Yeah. Is that the thing that you see? This is my final question I think on this is what's the common
00:13:47
Speaker
cause of something escalating from a complaint into a claim or going into the ADR process? Do you find that many of them could have been prevented earlier if they've been dealt with definitely at the complaint stage? Or is it a case that the chairman on the whole of their right to have escalated beyond that point? I mean, to be fair, I think that the data we have from our ADR providers suggests that our firms generally do a pretty good job of handling complaints.
00:14:15
Speaker
you know, there will be a lot of the cases that go to ADR are about allegations that something's been missed in a home survey or that, you know, evaluation has maybe not taken account of the right comparables and things like that. And that's either because people have, you know,
00:14:42
Speaker
people have found something later where they've moved into a property that wasn't there to be seen when the surveyor was there or perhaps because they've moved to wardrobe and found something and we all know that surveyors doing a home survey aren't going to go around moving the furniture or they've taken off wallpaper and found something underneath it. It's all of those, it's those sorts of things where actually when the surveyor looks at the complaint,
00:15:08
Speaker
They're absolutely right to say, well, no, sorry, that wasn't something that was our fault. But of course, the homeowner is now looking at expensive repairs or whatever, and they are going to be cross that they didn't know about that beforehand. And those are often the cases that go to ADR. But the fact that something goes to ADR doesn't mean that
00:15:35
Speaker
there is a claim that there's a valid point, it probably just means that someone's got an awful lot of emotion invested in it, and isn't prepared to take the firm's word for something. Interesting. Okay, so yeah, so again, not always a negative to be going into ADR. It's, yeah, that's also a good point to remember in that process, I think.