Complaints are great

Am I mad? Well maybe a little hungry and sleep deprived... Anyway today I completed the 'final draft' of a code of practice for children and young people's complaints, and I think I've convinced myself that complaints really are great. Now all I need is a few other people with the same attitude.

Of course in practice people don't seem to deal with complaints very well:

• they're often seen as threatening and horrible
• people can respond extremely defensively
• sometimes as soon as you mention a complaint senior managers get involved and it all becomes very bureaucratic (e.g. in the NHS I'm told)
• in the end the whole experience is very painful for everyone

My personal experiences have been bittersweet. Several complaints have been made against me in the past, and they were usually quite painful experiences while they were being investigated. Powerful people have warned me not to defend myself or projects I cared about would suffer. I had to do a lot of extra work dealing with the complaints. Other people have been forced to get involved and do lots of extra work unnecessarily. There's the worry that something bad is going to happen at the end...

...then when it comes down to it, so far (touch wood), all the complaints have either been dropped (when I get a chance to have my say) or they've been turned around and the complainants have had to mend their ways. In practice I'm very careful and conscientious about my work, although my 'principled' approach does sometimes lead me into dangerous territory where my actions can be misunderstood (or people just jump to false assumptions).

Of course I have also learned good lessons myself in the process, but these lessons have often seemed to be despite the complaint, not because of it. What I mean is that I spent so much time carefully analysing what happened that I would be foolish not to be able to find some lessons, but usually the complaints are out of all proportion to the lesson, and the lesson is often more about avoiding complaints rather than mending alleged bad practice.

I've also had a couple of experiences recently where I haven't been complaining, but my requests or interventions have been taken as complaints. One recent request ended up on the desk of a very senior finance manager, who assured me my complaint would be responded to within 10 days. This sent shivers down my spine: I didn't want that sort of attention, and I could see all the middle managers dealing with the issue bristling with indignation that such a minor issue was causing all this fuss.

So despite all this, I think complaints are great? Yes, but to really realise how great they are we need much more of them, and we need to learn to deal with them more effectively.

Potentially some of the benefits of complaints:

• they can help us to identify potential improvements to services
• they are a form of 'customer feedback'
• they are a form of mutual problem solving: people can express their frustrations and see some positive results
• if they are handled well, they are empowering (because of the mutual problem solving aspect)
• they break down the barriers between staff and 'clients'
  
• they can show an organisation cares, beyond the fact of simply delivering a service, if they handle complaints well

Also of course, if complaints are properly handled, you avoid all the negative sides of current responses to complaints:

• people won't be so upset by them
• they shouldn't grow into such time-consuming bureaucratic messes
• people will be able to work on them between individuals, and avoid involving too many others

So take a complaint today, and be nice about it - it may make you feel better...