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This paper compares traditional and digital banks in nine categories of complaints and provides insights to improve complaint management performance.

A sample of the major Brazilian banks was defined, with four traditional and four digital banks. The grey relational analysis (GRA) method was applied as an analytical tool to compare the most frequent complaints of traditional and digital banks. The most critical complaints identified were considered to discuss potential improvements in complaint management using quality and service management system concepts.

The GRA method enabled the development of a ranking of nine complaint categories, considering the uncertainty involved in the data and differentiating between traditional and digital banks. The most critical complaint categories, regardless of business model, were “unauthorized charges” and “poor service,” which were ranked first and second in the frequency rankings. Traditional and digital banks differed the most in the complaint category “unfair charge,” ranking third and eighth in the rankings, respectively.

Managers from traditional and digital banks can improve complaint management performance by applying ISO 9001 and ISO 20000 concepts such as incident, problem, change, service level, availability, capacity, information technology service continuity and financial management.

The study's findings can help bank managers improve service levels in the face of technological competition. Improving these organizations is an important factor for developing countries such as Brazil.

This paper reveals the differences between two business models regarding complaint management. It also considers a methodological approach to include the uncertainty related to customers' perception and subjectivity inherent to complaints.

In the literature on complaint management the importance is acknowledged of learning from complaints. Still, the concept of organisational learning has not yet been embedded in the field of complaint management. Therefore, this paper aims to adjust a general model for organisational learning to the concept of complaint management in order to make it operational for this field.

The notion of organisational learning in combination with complaint management is modelled as a system. This system enabled us to analyse the practices of handling and analysing complaints within six Dutch service organisations and to assess the potential of these organisations for organisational learning.

The results of the paper categorise a variety of complaint management practices along two elements of organisational learning: triggers and modes of learning (i.e. informational learning or interactive learning).

Further research should include the applicability of the learning model to different sectors or organisations.

This collection of practices can be used as a managerial guideline for improving the processes of learning from complaints.

This paper contributes to embedding the concept of organisational learning in the field of complaint management.

A continuous issue which plagues all service businesses is the process of handling complaints. Whilst the topic has been relatively well explored, extant literature has failed to fully explore how staff demographics influence the methods in which they manage complaints.

A qualitative approach was adopted with semi-structured interviews. A purposeful sample was selected, inviting managers from hotels in Dubai to share their views on factors affecting the complaint management process, including the impact of staff demographics.

Staff demographics were found to have an impact on staff's approach to handle complaints. However, participants generally felt that, with sufficient experience, the impact of many of these influences would be negated.

Literature on complaint management has considered numerous mitigating factors affecting the complaint management process. The impact of staff demographics on how they receive and respond to complaints has not been thoroughly explored.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between operational risk management and customer complaints. It also determines whether product complexity moderates the relationship between the operational risk management and customer complaints.

This study utilizes a quantitative method: quantitative data were collected using a questionnaire. The population of this study is 1,845 local conventional bank branches based in Malaysia.

The findings revealed that components of operational risk management, namely practice of hazard identification and formulation of implementation of risk control, have negative and significant relationships with customer complaints. Empirical evidence confirmed the moderating effects of product complexity on the relationship between operational risk management and customer complaints.

From the perspective of developing countries, the main contribution of this study is the elucidation of the effect of operational risk management on customer complaints in commercial banks in Malaysia. This study confirmed the usability of the resource-based view theory in the banking industry, as well as operational risk management as a bank resource.

Despite the great impact of complaint handling on customer retention and the beneficial usage of complaint information for quality improvements, most companies have great difficulty calculating the profitability of their complaint management. As a consequence of this knowledge deficit, complaint management is often not regarded as a profit centre but as a cost centre, which makes it a probable victim for cost reductions by cutting back its activities. Hence, there is a huge challenge to develop methods and to address this issue. This work contributes to this. It is shown how complaint management profitability (CMP) can be conceptualized and several types of benefits and costs are presented. On this basis several propositions about the current practice of CMP calculation are developed. To test these propositions a comprehensive empirical study was conducted among complaint managers of major German companies in the business‐to‐consumer market. The collected information shows that the assumed CMP knowledge deficit is even higher than expected. To reduce this deficit this article provides an approach to calculate CMP on basis of the repurchase benefit.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the ISO 10002: 2004 standard from the perspective of its context within the ISO 10001/2/3 triad of customer satisfaction complaint system and ISO 9001 quality management system standards, its complaints handling content, and the standard's applicability in a public electrical utility.

A summary of the ISO 10001/2/3 standards is presented, followed by a more detailed analysis of ISO 10002: 2004 and its possible integration with ISO 9001: 2000. Subsequently, a demonstration of how ISO10002: 2004 compares to the case study electrical utility's complaints‐handling system is provided.

ISO 10001/2/3 can guide organisations in preventing customer dissatisfaction as well as in resolving complaints within and outside the organisations' borders. Results of the gap analysis between ISO 10002: 2004 and the electrical utility's complaints handling system showed major opportunities for improving the overall system, looking beyond merely addressing individual complaints.

Only one organisation was studied and ISO 10002: 2004 was less than a month old at the time. Quality management researchers will see opportunities for further investigation into the application of ISO 10001/2/3 and how these standards can augment quality management systems, particularly those based upon ISO 9001: 2000.

The presented discussion on an internationally‐standardized complaint‐handling system gives practitioners in the energy and other industries an incentive to study and apply ISO 10002: 2004.

The paper is a pioneering effort in applying ISO 10002: 2004 to an actual organisation. Furthermore, the links shown between complaints handling and quality management will open up new avenues for research in the area of the integration of standardized management systems.

The objective of this paper is to highlight the importance of information technology in service recovery performance through the exploration of its influence on service recovery performance components and determinants.

A general inductive approach for analyzing qualitative data was adopted since the main research question of “How can information technology enable successful service recovery?” has not been examined in the complaint management literature. Data were collected through in‐depth interviews with key executives working in the Tunisian banking sector.

Drawing on the knowledge‐based view (KBV), the authors develop a general framework to understand the differences in service recovery performance (SRP). The research shows that various knowledge‐based resources such as customer orientation (CO), internal orientation (IO), and information technology (IT) complement one another to impact on SRP. Ignoring the complementarities of these resources in assessing SRP can seriously underestimate the impact of IT on the knowledge assets that are embedded in the firm recovery competency. This distinctive business competency is labelled knowledge enabled recovery effectiveness (KERE).

Given the exploratory nature of this study, these preliminary results need quantitative research to refine theory and measurement of service recovery capabilities and for future validation of the proposed framework.

The findings provide important implications for the effective design and the automation of complaint management and for the intervening mechanisms that govern the IT business value.

The paper examines the issue of complaint management from a knowledge based view and calls for the need to consider specific customer relationship management (CRM) areas as a set of knowledge based activities.

Complaint management is at the heart of customer relationship management. While many studies have analyzed a client’s complaint behavior in business-to-business (B2B) relationships, there is a lack of research in the study of complaints by distributors from different countries. The purpose of this paper is to explain the following two main objectives: to analyze if the complaint management strategy of a manufacturer varies depending on the type of international distributor used (indirect exporters, direct exporters and commercial subsidiaries); and to analyze the potential effects of complaint management on the satisfaction and fidelity of distributors and the quantity of complaints that they put.

A stratified probabilistic sampling method was used, dividing the entire population of distributors of a leading Spanish manufacturer into three different groups. In total, 79 valid responses were obtained as follows: 24 per cent from indirect exporters (organizational commitment Grade 1), 68 per cent from direct exporters (organizational commitment Grade 2) and 8 per cent from commercial subsidiaries (organizational commitment Grade 3). Partial least squares were used to analyze the proposed relationships.

The results have confirmed that the procedure for resolving the complaint and its length (resolution time) depends on the seriousness of the complaint (the type of complaint). In turn, the resolution of the complaint influences the satisfaction of the vendor and the latter will influence its fidelity. Regarding the number of complaints, those distributors with the highest number of complaints satisfactorily resolved are those who remain loyal to the company. On the contrary, it is not possible to affirm that the type of distribution channel affects the types of complaints that are presented. Different kinds of distributors of the same manufacturer (indirect exporters, direct exporters and commercial subsidiaries) complain equally. In addition, those whose complaints take longer to resolve are not significantly less satisfied. Even more, low-satisfied distributors will present more complaints than the most satisfied ones.

First, this study investigates if different kinds of distributors with different international commitments (indirect exporting, direct exporting and commercial subsidiary) behave differently in terms of claims and complaints. Second, this paper analyzes the role of complaint management in international B2B relations to improve distributors' satisfaction and loyalty; but considering the join impact of three dimensions of a successful complaint management strategy that literature usually has examined separately as follows: what (the type of complaint), how it is resolved (management procedure) and when it is closed (duration).

The purpose of this paper is threefold: to examine complaint management among retailers in order to develop a typology of their strategic complaint management system; to develop a profile of each retailer group included in the typology using a set of key relevant variables (e.g. company size, perceived customer dissatisfaction); and to investigate the state of complaint management across different types of retailers.

Data are collected from an online survey of Danish and Swedish grocery retailers, electronic stores, car‐dealers, and furniture stores (n=260) using self‐administered questionnaires.

Cluster analysis identifies two clusters of retailers: non‐active complaint handlers and medium‐active complaint handlers. Medium‐active complaint handlers regard complaint handling as having higher strategic relevance than non‐active complaint handlers and also, medium‐active complaint handlers were more inclined to compensate the complaining customers for the loss they might have experienced. The developed cluster profiles revealed that medium‐active complaint handlers perceive a higher degree of customer dissatisfaction than do non‐active complaint handlers and also that a larger proportion of their customers have complained. Within retailers, grocery stores had the best compensation policies and the most positive attitude toward retailer‐customer interaction, while car dealers are the most likely to have a strategic plan to deal with complaints.

The results obtained in this paper indicate that retailers hesitate from inciting customers to complain. This is unfortunate, as dissatisfied customers should be regarded as a strategic asset, which potentially could provide retailers with important knowledge concerning their products and services and thereby helping retailers in improving their market place behaviour.

No other research has looked across different types of retailers to determine if there are differences in the integration of complaints to the strategic management process.

The purpose of this paper is to gain a deeper understanding of the attributes of effective complaint management in business‐to‐business relationships, and to reveal the underlying benefits that buying organizations are looking for when complaining.

A semi‐standardized qualitative technique called laddering was applied successfully to an online environment with 22 representatives of companies in the manufacturing industry participating.

The resulting hierarchical value map displays 13 attributes which exemplify the complaint resolution management expectations. A total of 14 constructs represent consequences of such resolution activities, while four constructs can be interpreted as values. Take “Quick action” is the most important of the expected attributes and behaviours of complaint resolution management. Four consequences seem to dominate the assessment: Financial benefits, Prevention of future problems, Solution, and Effective resolution handling. “Maintain supplier relationships” appears as a dominant value in the perceptions of respondents, with half of them mentioning this as an end.

Owing to the exploratory nature of the study in general and the scope and size of its sample in particular, the findings are tentative in nature. The study involved a group of representatives of large UK manufacturing companies with complaint handling responsibilities and so the results cannot be generalised.

The findings enrich the existing limited stock of knowledge on complaint management in business relationships by developing a deeper understanding of the attributes that complaining customer companies desire from suppliers, as well as the underlying business logic (i.e. values) for these expectations. The quality of the results also suggests that the laddering questionnaire technique can be transferred effectively to an online environment.