Digital Communications Officer
Today we have published new Good complaint handling guides for the NHS in England and UK central government organisations. The guides will help these organisations approach complaint handling in a clear and consistent way.
Clear, concise and easy-to-use
The guides explain what organisations need to do to meet the expectations set out in the Complaint Standards. They provide advice on a range of topics, from resolving complaints quickly to writing and communicating a final response.
There are currently 25 guides alongside a set of practical tools to support everyday complaint handling. They are presented in a digital-first format so the guidance is easier to use.
To make it easier for people to find and follow the guidance they need we’ve:
- made the language clearer and more concise
- given the guides a new design and layout
- made the content more mobile-friendly
- highlighted important points, such as tips and things to remember
- created an online toolkit with useful resources, including step-by-step guides, sample letters, forms and posters
- added video content, such as case studies.
We’ve also published a new guide to help NHS and UK Central Government organisations capture and record the learning from complaints.
Meeting user needs
We worked with frontline complaint handlers to update the new guides. To make sure we could meet their needs in terms of content format and presentation, we tested the new-look guides with them during development and made improvements based on their feedback.
Their response to the new-look guides has been positive, with testers praising the "helpful navigation" and the content layout.
We also received feedback that the guides should be more mobile friendly so we’ve made sure the content is more concise and accessible across all devices.
We're really grateful to all the complaint handling professionals who took the time to test the new content. Their feedback has been invaluable in creating guides that will help make complaint-handling easier.
Next steps
We hope these more user-friendly complaint handling guides will help increase the number of complaints organisations are able to resolve within their organisation.
We’ll continue to improve the guides and other Complaint Standards resources in the future so please let us know what you think. Email your feedback to content@ombudsman.org.uk
We’ll also be launching new guides soon, including guidance on challenging behaviour. Sign up for our email alerts to be kept up to date with new guidance and other Complaint Standards updates.
