Customer feedback policy

Our customer's feedback gives RWC opportunities to learn and improve. We value feedback about our services and recognise the right of our customers to make a complaint, compliment or suggestion about our services. We are committed to using customer feedback to improve our products and services. RWC's customers, like our staff, are not cold statistics. We are all human beings who deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.

How do we learn from feedback?

Each piece of feedback from the public will be reviewed carefully to establish what we can learn and if we can improve our products and services.

Who are our customers?

Our definition of a customer is: “If you contact us for any reason, or you are affected by anything we do, you are one of our customers”.

What is a compliment?

A compliment is when a customer gives us feedback about how we exceeded expectations in delivering a service or how an employee has gone the “extra mile” to serve them. We will record details and publish the compliment for others to see.

What is a suggestion?

A suggestion is when a customer comments on how we can improve our delivery of a service. We will study how we will implement the suggestion, or investigate it further if we are unable to implement the suggestion.

What is a complaint?

Any expression of dissatisfaction, whether justified or not, about our products, services, employees or policies. A complaint could include one or more of the following problems:

• We delay in providing a product or service
• We provide a poor quality product or service or make a mistake
• We charge an inappropriate cost for a product or service
• An employee’s behaviour causes upset
• A policy unreasonably disadvantages a customer
• We unfairly discriminate against a customer

What action can we take to put things right when things go wrong?

If we make a mistake, we will apologise and try to take some practical action to put things right. We may ask the customer to suggest what he or she would like us to do. We will always try to put the customer back to the position that he or she would have been in but for our mistake. We will also try to ensure that the same mistake does not happen again. We may decide that one or more of the following can be done to put things right:

• Provide or change a product or service to the customer
• Provide an explanation or information to the customer
• Review customer literature (leaflets, website, poster and so on)
• Review a policy or procedure
• Arrange training or guidance for employees
• Take employee action (such as standards setting or change of key worker)
• Give a refund in appropriate circumstances

How do we deal with customers who remain dissatisfied after we have fully responded to their complaint?

We will advise any customer who has completed all stages of our customer feedback scheme to contact the Local Government Ombudsman. If the customer complains again about the same issue, our Chief Executive may write to him/her informing that we will not respond to future correspondence about the complaint unless the customer provides new evidence or makes a complaint about a different issue.