A complaint is a dissatisfied customer giving you a second chance. A dissatisfied customer who does not complain usually just leaves quietly. ISO 10002:2018 defines principles for complaints handling in organisations, such as visibility, accessibility, responsiveness, objectivity, confidentiality and continual improvement. ISO 9001 also requires customer feedback to be monitored (9.1.2) and non-conformities to be addressed (10.2). This guide aims to turn these principles into a day-to-day workflow.
You can use this guide as a working list when designing your complaint process or reviewing your current one.
The complaint process
- 01Receipt and recording
- 02Acknowledgement
- 03Initial assessment
- 04Investigation and root cause
- 05Response and resolution
- 06Closure and analysis
Whatever channel a complaint comes through (phone, email, web form, sales representative, field service), it must enter the same recording system. Scattered channels cause complaints to get lost and the same customer to explain the same problem to different people again and again.
Receipt and recording
| Field | Why it is needed |
|---|---|
| Complaint number and date/time | Tracking and measuring response time |
| Customer and contact person | Making sure the response reaches the right person |
| Channel | Analysing how much each channel is used |
| Product / service, lot or serial number | Traceability and identifying other affected products |
| Description and evidence | Photos, samples, documents; in the customer's own words |
| Customer's expectation | Replacement, return, repair, explanation, compensation |
| Category and priority | Routing to the right team and setting the response time |
| Owner | The one person accountable for the complaint |
A complaint record also contains the customer's personal data. This data should be used only to resolve the complaint, access should be restricted, and the retention period should follow your KVKK retention and destruction policy.
Acknowledgement and prioritisation
Tell the customer immediately that their complaint has been received, give a tracking number and the next step. Then prioritise the complaint by impact and urgency. If response times are defined in contracts or service level agreements (SLAs), those times apply.
| Priority | Example | First response | Resolution target |
|---|---|---|---|
| Critical | Safety risk, customer line stopped, legal non-compliance | 2 hours | Containment in 24 hours, permanent fix in 10 business days |
| High | Loss of function, batch of defective shipments | 1 business day | 10 business days |
| Medium | Partial defect, delivery delay | 2 business days | 20 business days |
| Low | Cosmetic defect, missing information, suggestion | 3 business days | 30 days |
For consumer sales, the periods and rights in Consumer Protection Law No. 6502 and related regulations must also be taken into account. For business customers, the warranty and SLA clauses in the contract are decisive.
Investigation and root cause
- 01Verify
Confirm whether the complaint is justified using samples, records and data. An unjustified complaint is also recorded and answered with reasons.
- 02Contain the impact
Is there product from the same lot in stock, in transit or at other customers? If needed, start segregation, extra inspection or a recall.
- 03Find the root cause
Use 5 Whys, a fishbone diagram or a fault tree to investigate both why it occurred and why it escaped (why it was not detected).
- 04Start corrective action
Link complaints with a risk of recurrence to the CAPA or 8D process, and verify the effectiveness of permanent actions.
Common mistakes: closing a complaint with a product replacement only and not looking for the root cause; writing “operator error” as the root cause without looking for the systemic cause; leaving the complaint ownerless between sales and quality; not giving the customer interim updates; not asking about customer satisfaction at closure.
Response, resolution and closure
The response to the customer should clearly state how the complaint was verified, the cause found, the containment and permanent actions taken and the decision on the customer's expectation. Adjust the technical detail to the customer's needs, and use language that takes responsibility rather than defensive language.
Measurement and improvement
| Indicator | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Complaints relative to shipments or revenue | Normalised complaint trend |
| First response time compliance | Responsiveness |
| Average resolution time | Process speed and bottlenecks |
| Repeat complaint rate | Effectiveness of corrective actions |
| Closure satisfaction | How the customer perceived the resolution |
| Pareto by category and product | Improvement priority |
Analyse complaint data monthly by category, product, customer and root cause, and take the results to management review. Recurring complaint topics should feed into the enterprise risk register and the product development roadmap.
Conclusion
A good complaint process captures the customer's voice without losing it, responds quickly and removes the root cause so the same problem does not recur. OREL CRM gathers complaints from every channel into one record linked to the customer's history, and OREL QMS closes the loop by connecting complaints to the non-conformity, CAPA and 8D flow.