The Panel is concerned that complaints are not registered as complaints unless they are escalated, which means that many are not resolved properly. This is likely to have a particular impact on vulnerable consumers, who may not have the skills or confidence to pursue their complaints, or may not know that they can escalate a complaint. Vulnerable consumers may suffer financially as a result; they may end up abandoning meritorious complaints, with the result that they make payments which are not justified or get an unwarranted bad payment record. The Panel notes that some communications providers have been making efforts to improve complaints-handling by, for example, contacting customers who have called customer services to find out if they were satisfied with how their enquiries were handled.
There are currently two Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) telecoms schemes in the UK. They have been approved by Ofcom to help resolve disagreements between customers and their telephone company or internet service provider. One is Otelo, the Office of the Telecommunications Ombudsman, and the other is CISAS, the Communications and Internet Services Adjudication Scheme.
To influence Ofcom to take steps towards ensuring complaints handling procedures are transparent and accessible so that making and resolving a complaint with your communications provider becomes easier for consumers.
The Panel believes that escalation of complaints should not have to be prompted by consumers. Providers should tell consumers about their ability to escalate complaints at an early stage. The objective of providers should be to ensure that escalation of a complaint is linked to the harm that a consumer has suffered rather than a consumer's ability to pursue the complaint proactively.
The Panel hopes that the Ofcom code will help to raise the standard of complaints handling across the communications sector and welcomes Ofcom's definition of a complaint, which includes issues that are not escalated.
The Panel believes that Ofcom should also examine in more depth the barriers consumer face to making a complaint. At the moment, providers do not appear to be incentivised to view complaints as customer feedback and as a result they do not always resolve them effectively. So Ofcom should consider how providers could be encouraged to seek feedback from their customers and recognise that complaints provide an opportunity to improve.
The Panel wants Ofcom to raise standards of complaints-handling by publishing data on how providers perform, to give providers an incentive to improve their complaints-handling performance, including:
The Panel has also recommended that Ofcom consider publishing market research data over time such as including standard customer service metrics in the annual Consumer Experience Report rather than commissioning stand alone research. It also encouraged Ofcom to take a decision on whether to publish ADR scheme complaints as soon as possible, and announce the decision at the relevant time to provide companies with an appropriate lead time to publication.
It is vital that publication of complaints data happens alongside action to enable consumers to register and escalate complaints more easily. Otherwise, an unintended consequence of publishing complaints data might be that providers would make it harder for consumers to register complaints in order to reduce the number of official complaints made against them. Therefore, in identifying the right data to publish to ensure this perverse incentive is not created, the Panel encourage Ofcom to draw on work on publishing complaints data that is being carried out in other sectors and in other countries.
In relation to Ofcom's review of the two ADR schemes the Panel wants Ofcom to consider any detrimental effects on consumers of having two ADR schemes; to consider any economic effects of two schemes undertaking the same role; and to analyse the quality of outcomes for consumers from each of the two bodies to ensure equality of justice.
The Panel intended to continue to monitor Ofcom's work in this area closely and provide further advice at the next appropriate point. It will monitor whether Ofcom publishes complaints and ADR data and whether it ensures an independent audit measures information about providers' performance against the code of practice, and that this information is published.
Ofcom's consultation document, 22 July 2010
Response to Ofcom's review of Consumer Complaints Procedures, March 2010
Panel press release to accompany response to Ofcom, March 2010
Advice to Ofcom: Quality of Service Consultation, Oct 2008
Response from Ofcom on ADR, July 2008
Advice note on complaints handling and ADR, February 2008
Ofcom email on ADR Statement, inc comments on the Panel's consultation response, December 2005
Response to Ofcom's Review of Alternative Dispute Resolution Schemes, 10 Oct 2005
Consumer Panel members comments on the 1st draft of Ofcom's ADR consultation, July 2005
In February 2008 the Panel engaged with Ofcom at a Panel meeting to provide advice on Ofcom's proposed Review of Complaints Handling and Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) schemes, which was published in an advice note. Ofcom responded to this note in July 2008 stating how it would take forward the Panel's recommendations.
In October 2008 the Panel wrote to Ofcom with a general response to the Ofcom consultation document "Review of quality of service information - Phase 1: information on quality of customer service" published on 17 July 2008. The Panel stated that quality of service (QoS) information is an important factor in making consumers more active in the telecoms market. We stated that the publication of QoS indicators would be a valuable incentive to industry to not only maintain but improve standards. And the added competition for improved network quality between providers would benefit consumers.
In June 2009 the Panel considered the progress of Ofcom's work on complaints handling and ADR and supported steps taken to make ADR more accessible by reducing the period before consumers can go to ADR from 12 to 8 weeks. The Panel recommended that Ofcom focused separately on complaints-handling with a view to increasing the level of complaints-handling considerably and develop a definition of a complaint which includes issues that are not escalated.
In September 2009 the Panel again considered the progress of Ofcom's work on complaints handling and ADR. The Panel felt that Ofcom's proposed consultation would not resolve all the issues and recommended that complaint handling and ADR should feature in Ofcom's 2010/11 Annual Plan to reflect the fact that this would be a long term project.
In early 2010, during development of Ofcom's Review document the Panel met regularly with colleagues from Ofcom, helping them to understand the issue from a consumer perspective and advising them on improving the way communications providers handle complaints. In March 2010 the Panel responded to Ofcom's consultation on complaints handling, stating that the proposed new code of practice was an important step towards improving how communications providers deal with consumer complaints. We welcomed the plans to enable consumers to register and escalate complaints more easily and were pleased that the code would apply to complaints made by small businesses (up to 10 employees), as well as individual consumers.
In June and July 2010, the Panel held discussions with Ofcom's consumer affairs team and advised them to proceed as quickly as possible with work to publish Ofcom complaints data and explore the possibility of publishing ADR data. In July 2010 we responded to Ofcom's statement on complaints handling and issued a press release calling for publication of complaints data.
In October 2010 the Panel again considered the progress of Ofcom's work on complaints handling and ADR at a Panel meeting and provided advice.
As well as routine monitoring of the ongoing work of Ofcom, the Panel also held meetings with Otelo, to understand the situation from the perspective of the ombudsman.