The UsefulFeedback! Blog

An effective complaints and feedback software solution can be a great tool for assisting customer relations experts to identify and resolve customer complaints (and handle other feedback such as compliments and suggestions). These solutions can deliver a powerful range of tools to complaint handlers and managers - assisting in the resolution of customer dissatisfaction and preventing recurrence of emerging issues. However, a study by the Strativity Group (2009) identified that only 39 percent of corporate executives believe that their employees have the right tools and authority to solve customer problems. Complaints managers and customer relations managers often face internal pressures to join wider Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software implementation programmes and will be asked to justify why a dedicated complaints and feedback software solution will provide a better solution than the CRM's customer...

Many organisations have adopted Microsoft CRM as their enterprise CRM solution. We have recently published a document that illustrates a working example of how our UsefulFeedback! product can be rapidly integrated with Microsoft CRM. This approach allows those organisations that want to use their Microsoft CRM system for managing customer, account and sales details to also benefit from the additional case management features of UsefulFeedback!.

The simple integration between UsefulFeedback! and Microsoft CRM implements REST web services that are made available by both products. Based on an organisation's requirements, we can extend this functionality by passing as much additional information as is required via these integration points, or using additional web services where available.

The integration points described in the document are:

Find customer records stored within the CRM Case created in UsefulFeedback! and then linked back to a case within the CRM Case status...

Resolving customer complaints on social media will present your organisation with both challenges and opportunities.

Your organisation may benefit initially by simply listening to the conversations on social media to discover how your customers are using social media before taking steps to actively engage with your customers on social media. Some organisations may find that their customers are neither currently expecting the organisation to have a social media presence nor expecting them to engage with them. However, current trends suggest that the modern consumer is making use of social media and – partly because of the marketing activities of many organisations on social media – is increasingly likely to voice a concern or complaint within a social network.

The UsefulFeedback! PPI complaint solution provides a web-based consumer questionnaire based upon the FOS’ own information capture form, ensuring an accurate, FSA-compliant collection of all relevant data.

We are pleased to announce that iCasework have been accepted as a supplier of Cloud services to the UK Government. The Government Procurement Service (GPS) has published an online catalogue of suppliers, known as the CloudStore, to ease and simplify the purchase of cloud solutions by UK public services.

We recently launched UsefulFeedback v7.5 and this includes several new 'goodies' but also enhances several existing features - based on the feedback we actively collect from both existing users and also potential clients who watch a demo or test out the system with one of our free trials.

This week, we launched our complaint redressal solution for the Indian telecommunications market.

We have designed this new industry-specific configuration template to support Indian telecom service providers in complying with TRAI's (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) latest complaint redressal regulations. TRAI has directed that service providers must establish a complaint centre for the redressal of consumer complaints, remove the current nodal officer tier and update the process for handling appeals to Appellate Authorities (including gaining input from new Advisory Committees).

With the spotlight on Government and the ever increasing need to manage budget cuts, UsefulFeedback! has launched pre-configured templates to help Central & Local Government organisations streamline complaints management procedures and facilitate cost savings of as much as £1,000+ per complaint.

Recent news that npower has been fined £2m by the Energy Regulator Ofgem for the mismanagement of customer complaints and that EDF Energy is under investigation for the same, reaffirms the critical state of the complaints handling and management processes across the UK’s private and public sector.

In recent times the focus for many organisations has switched to cost reduction and even corner-cutting and although attempts to uphold good customer practice remain, many companies have found that their efforts have been compromised by the need to be lean.