CHG814 - Dealing with Complaints: Cross-Business Complaints

Background

We often receive complaints covering activities of more than one business area. As far as the complainant is concerned, they are dealing with HMRC. You must ensure we provide a joined-up response, otherwise we could give the impression our customer service is fragmented and disjointed.

Providing separate responses also carries the risk of information provided by one business area not matching the information provided by another. This reflects poorly on our professionalism.

Taking Ownership of Complaints

Our priority is to deal with the complaint as soon as possible, even if ownership is not immediately apparent.

Usually, most of a multi-aspect complaint relates to one business area. In such cases that area must take responsibility for coordinating the response. That area must also seek advice and help from other areas as necessary, recording it on CHART as such.

Where there is initial doubt which area takes the lead, you must:

  • contact complaints handlers in the other area(s),
  • agree between you who will take the lead and who will contribute to the response if required. 

The lead area will then record the complaint on CHART.

There may be circumstances where a business area initially takes ownership of a complaint (for example to avoid any further delay) before a final decision on ownership is made. If so;

  • that area records the complaint on CHART, then redirects as necessary
  • a case can be redirected in CHART once registered if it becomes clear it should be dealt with by another business area.
  • business areas should agree before any redirection.

The lead area can then request contributions from other areas as necessary.

When a customer escalates their T1 which included a contribution

Ownership of the Tier 2, should be determined by the issues being escalated by the complainant.

  1. If the Tier 2 covers the same substantive issues responded to by the Tier 1 business area or is mainly about the handling of the Tier 1 (for example, delay in processing the complaint) then the original Tier 1 business area should take ownership in the original business area.
  2. If the Tier 2 is mainly about the contribution, then it should be handled by the business area who provided the contribution.
  3. It may lead to an anomaly within the data at business level i.e. Tier 2 handled with no corresponding Tier 1 but this should not prevent the appropriate business area dealing with the Tier 2.

In any of the above scenarios the case should be recorded on CHART by the responding area and contributions requested as necessary.

Not all cases will be straight forward and there may be cases where business areas are reluctant to register a case for example if large amounts of redress could be due. If you cannot agree who should respond, please contact CCAST for advice as early as possible to prevent any undue delay.

Note – CCAST’s advice should be adhered to unless there are very strong grounds not to do so.