If you had to ask any Food Safety Manager, “what part of your job do you dislike the most?” most of you will say “customer complaints”. Fraught with negative emotion, customer complaints is the feedback loop that tell us that something is wrong – it is a red flag, it requires pausing, listening, understanding empathising, investigating and fixing. Analysing and trending complaints provides us with the overall health profile status of our food safety management system, and like most things, nothing is every perfect; if you have customers, complaints are a reality. Like facing Mondays, you can’t run away and hide from them, you have to take them in your stride. It requires a level-headed positive attitude, empathetic heart and a robust, well documented process to manage them well.

Why we need to document our Customer Complaints Procedure?

Your business depends on keeping your customers happy. The manner in which you deal with your customers when they give you feedback, positive or negative, is a reflection of your food safety culture and brand values and will impact your company’s reputation. Customers need to feel cared for and documenting the best way to handle customer complaints will ensure that this is approached with consistent professionalism, aligned with food safety standards, best practices, and your company brand values. Customer complaints may even trigger an emergency such as a product recall or withdrawal, so recording the required complaint details, investigating the cause and taking speedy action may also save lives in the event of a food safety incident.