A customer complaint rarely becomes a crisis because something went wrong. It becomes one because nobody answered.
That was the thread running through our recent webinar, How to Stop Complaints from Becoming a PR Disaster. Our host, Schalk Kearney was joined by Thozama Ngqakayi, Head: Voice of Customer at Old Mutual SA; Bradly Howland, CEO of Alkemi Collective and Immediate Past President of PRISA; and Alister Brown, Founder & CEO of Kunye Cloud.
Here’s what they said, and what you can take back to your team.
1. The risk is the silence, not the complaint
Thozama put it simply: it isn’t the complaint that creates the risk, it’s the unresolved complaint. The risk starts long before anything goes viral. It starts the moment a customer takes the time to tell you about a bad experience.
Bradly sees the same pattern from the PR side. When customers feel unheard, they copy in the media, escalate to the ombud or post on Hellopeter. Others pile in, one bad experience becomes a shared one, and once it’s viral it’s unmanageable.
Takeaway: acknowledge every complaint, even before you can resolve it. People forgive mistakes far more readily than being ignored.
2. Use the first hour to connect, not to fix
The instinct is to jump straight to solving the problem. Thozama’s advice is to connect first: understand the experience, empathise, ask what outcome the customer expects and set honest timelines.
She shared an example. A proof-of-payment complaint turned out to be from a customer with nowhere to sleep that night. A two-day SLA wouldn’t have done. An automated reference number can’t uncover that, but a conversation can.
3. Measure your SLA from the customer’s side
Can you tell a query is at risk before the SLA is breached? Alister’s answer: yes, but only if you measure from the customer’s point of view.
The clock starts when the customer sends the email, not when someone finds it in a queue of a thousand others. Measure it that way and you see how you’re really treating your customers.
4. Give every complaint one owner
As businesses grow, important emails get stuck in mailboxes of thousands. Outlook and Gmail aren’t built for this: emails get lost or deleted, even by accident.
Alister’s fix is to build ownership in, so every interaction belongs to someone. Build in what you promised the customer too. If you commit to four hours, the case should resurface visibly when the time is up. Small system nudges drive good service behaviour.
Thozama added a point about access. Not everyone has email, so take complaints by phone, digital channels and face to face, then route them all into one funnel.
5. Apologise for the experience, not the technicalities
In regulated industries the instinct is to wait for legal. Bradly’s view is that you don’t have to. Establishing the facts takes time, but acknowledging the customer’s frustration and your wish to help is something legal and compliance are usually comfortable with.
It de-escalates immediately. Customers are more willing to walk the journey with you, even when the outcome isn’t what they hoped for.
Thozama’s tip for getting it past compliance: treat each complaint as a project with one owner who leads the engagement and advocates for the customer internally. What you don’t want is five different voices.
6. When it goes public, be human and close the loop
Once a complaint reaches social media, hiding comments or posting one generic reply to everyone inflames things. Take it offline, then follow through. Customers screenshot brands that took it offline and went quiet.
Don’t be defensive. If the issue was public, close the loop publicly: what you learned and what you’re changing.
7. Treat complaints as an early-warning system
Thozama recommends capturing two kinds of root cause:
- Service failures, where something went wrong
- Expectation gaps, where everything worked as designed but the customer expected something else
The second kind shows you how to redesign products. Then give the data teeth: report root causes and corrective actions up to board level.
Getting operational teams to fix recurring issues takes executive buy-in. At one bank, exco agreed to give 10% of product team capacity to continuous improvement. Agree up front how each fix will be measured, then track it.
As Alister noted, the bigger the organisation, the harder it is to act on the data. Getting the insight out has to be built into your processes, not left to chance. (For more on this, see the most common complaint-handling mistakes.)
“Our volume is too complex” doesn’t hold up
Old Mutual runs 38 mailboxes as one accountable queue. If they can do it at that scale, most businesses can too.
The panel’s last word: the next time you hear the word “complaint”, treat it as an opportunity to learn. Then ask your team one question. If we sent a query to your inbox right now, would it be resolved on time, and with real care? If not, start with your systems and processes.
Watch the full session
This post covers the highlights. The full recording includes the complete panel discussion and live Q&A, with chapters so you can jump to the parts that matter to you. Watch the recording.
Frequently asked questions
What is complaints management?
Complaints management is the process of receiving, tracking, resolving and learning from customer complaints. Good complaints management gives every complaint one owner, measures response times from the moment the customer makes contact, and feeds root causes back into the business so the same problems don’t keep recurring.
When does a customer complaint become a PR crisis?
Usually when the customer feels ignored. Unanswered complaints get escalated to the ombud, posted on platforms like Hellopeter or shared on social media, where others pile in. Acknowledging every complaint quickly, even before it’s resolved, is the simplest way to stop that from happening.
How should financial services companies in South Africa handle complaints?
Acknowledge the complaint fast, give it a single owner and keep one consistent voice with the customer while legal and compliance are involved. Apologise for the experience rather than the technicalities, set honest timelines, and report root causes and corrective actions up to board level.
Can a shared inbox help with complaints management?
A basic shared mailbox in Outlook or Gmail usually can’t, because it doesn’t track ownership, status or time, and emails can be lost or deleted. A purpose-built shared inbox with ownership, SLA tracking and an audit trail gives complaints teams the visibility to resolve every complaint on time.
Want to talk about your own inbox?
If your team handles complaints by email and you’d like to see how one owner, one thread and a visible clock work in practice, book a chat with Kunye Cloud. No pitch, just an open door.