Every company strives for increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty. But, without effective complaint management, it's only a matter of time before the seemingly sweet company-client relationship may turn sour. Drawing from their extensive experience in customer service, Strauss and Seidel deliver thorough coverage of complaint management, from helping readers understand why customers complain to illustrating how to handle customer complaints to effectively measuring and analyzing complaints.
Table of Contents
Part I: COMPLAINT MANAGEMENT IN A CUSTOMER-ORIENTED FIRM. 1. Complaints as a Challenge to the Firm. Part II: COMPLAINTS. 2. Definition and Types of Complaints. Part III: THE BEHAVIOR OF DISSATISFIED CUSTOMERS. 3. The Origin of Customer Dissatisfaction. Part IV: PRINCIPLES OF COMPLAINT MANAGEMENT. 4. Goals of Complaint Management. Part V: COMPLAINT STIMULATION. 5. Complaint Stimulation Rather Than Complaint Minimization. Part VI: COMPLAINT ACCEPTANCE. 6. Organization of the Complaint Receipt Process. Part VII: COMPLAINT PROCESSING. 7. The Complaint-Processing Procedure. Part VIII: COMPLAINT REACTION. 8. Basic Rules of Behavior For Handling Complaints. Part IX: COMPLAINT ANALYSIS. 9. Quantitiative Complaint Analysis. Part X: COMPLAINT-MANAGEMENT CONTROLLING. 10. Evidence Controlling. Part XI: COMPLAINT REPORTING. 11. Active Reporting of the Results of Complaint Analysis and Complaint-Management. Part XII: UTILIZATION OF COMPLAINT INFORMATION. 12. Utilization of Complaint Information bases upon the Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA). Part XII: HUMAN RESOURCE ASPECTS OF COMPLAINT MANAGEMENT. 13. THe Importance of Employee Behavior in Complaint Contact. Part XIII: ORGANIZATIONAL ASPECTS OF COMPLAINT MANAGEMENT. 14. Centralized, Decentralized, or Dual Complaint Management. Part XIV: TECHNOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF COMPLAINT MANAGEMENT. 15. Fundamental Determinants for the Implementation of Complaint-Management Software. Part XVI: COMPLAINT-MANAGEMENT CHECKLIST. 16. General Importance of Complaint Management.
Author Biography
Bernd Stauss holds the first German chair for services management at the Ingolstadt School of Management of the Catholic University Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, Germany. The focus of his interests are in management issues that emerge in the context of the production and marketing of services for internal and external customers. Wolfgang Seidel received his master's degree in business administration from the University of Bayreuth (Germany) and was then research assistant with Prof. Dr. Bernd Stauss. He is founder of "Servmark", a consulting company with the focus on topics in the field of the analysis, conception and implementation of complaint management, customer relationship management and services marketing. Wolfgang Seidel is frequent speaker at major conferences on complaint management and customer relationship management both in Europe and the USA.
