Complaint classification

Hi everyone!!

I'd like to classify our customer complaints into Minor, Major, and Critical.

I'd appreciate if you can share a reference as a basis for classifying complaints. Thank you in advance!

What will be the criteria for deciding minor, major & critical?

Hi :) 

​I would suggest two, as is hard to distinguish between Critical and major 

Serious – major – complaints are those that have caused alleged injury, illness, health complications, hospitalisation in a consumer, or have resulted in a near miss due to a significant flaw within the product. This could be a hard foreign body e.g., glass shard, metal piece, hard plastic piece, hard organic matter, etc., chemical, microbiological or allergenic contamination that have caused a reaction, incorrect allergenic information on the product packet, incorrect or misleading ingredient declaration, etc. 

Minor complaints are any other complaints, which do not fall into serious category, and can include, but are not limited to soft foreign bodies, e.g., hair or thread, issues relating to taste, smell, texture, any other quality issues, personal opinions, any unjustified complaints, complaints about marketing / pricing, etc. 

;)

I personally do not like using anything that an auditor might use such as major, minor as it can cause confusion. I use quality and food safety. I can also categorize the food safety ones further for trending purposes.

I personally do not like using anything that an auditor might use such as major, minor as it can cause confusion. I use quality and food safety. I can also categorize the food safety ones further for trending purposes.

Same.  We classify our consumer complaints as FS or Quality.  Anything related to FM, injury or alleged illness gets an escalation and full investigation on the spot.  Other complaints are maintained for trend review and any perceived spikes or recurrences can be brought forward for investigations.

We use 3 categories:

- Foreign Material Contaminate (FC) = plastic, metal, etc.

- Food Borne Illness (FI) = allergen, micro, etc. 

- General (G) = dislikes, lot code issue, etc. 

Simple and if anything other than a general complaint a full investigation is performed.  

Thanks for the advice everyone  :thumbup: I'll classify ours into FS and Quality. Moreover, do you think it's a good idea to further classify the Quality related complaints into Minor, Major, and Critical? If so, I'd appreciate if you can give a criteria for the classification. 

Hi Cholo,

 

I wouldn’t be looking to classify quality complaints into minor, major and critical, what I would be doing would be to categorise them by type of complaint and look at trends but also take action when you get over a certain amount of complaints from one batch of finished products.

 

For trend analysis I look at data weekly, monthly and annually, this helps identify areas for improvement. See the monthly example below.

 

6 Complaint Analysis IFSQN.jpg

 

Complaints are analysed per million units rather than just numbers as it gives a better indication of complaint performance. You can then target areas for improvement, 500g Honey Yoghurt would be an example in the monthly analysis shown above.

 

Kind regards,

 

Tony

Hi Tony,

Thanks for the advice!

Best regards,

Cholo