In December 2007 we helped National Audit Office staff to define the scope of what was to be their next project, examining how the governments Department for Work and Pensions handles customer complaints. They have recently published their final report.
There are two points worth highlighting:
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Only 1 in 5 complaints are being recorded (280,000 complaints are not recorded)
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Half of those customers who do complain remain dissatisfied
Are DWP adequately changing their services as a result of their customer complaints? Or does it mean, as the report points out, that they are “missing early warnings of poor services, systematic errors of problems with its process”. [see our earlier post] Complaints, feedback and criticism are so valuable for any organisation, as they help us to learn, do better, and ultimately to provide what local people really want.
The Department for Communities and local Government (CLG) recently published a white paper on Empowerment “Communities in Control” (which we at Community Links contributed to and were quoted at the start of chapter 2) The report contains an apt quote from Terry Leahy, Chief Executive of Tesco: “follow the customer, if they change… we change”.
Our Everyday Innovators approach takes the good ideas for improving local services from service users, frontline staff and managers and puts them into practice. The change can be dramatic as this article demontrates. It outlinines our Everyday Innovators ‘form filling and interpreting service’ which we successfully ran for four years in our local Jobcentres.
The 
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I went along to the original launch announcing this research nearly two years ago, so it’s great to see the final report from 