How organisations can learn from complaints

Purpose – In the literature on complaint management the importance is acknowledged of learning from complaints. Still, the concept of organisational learning has not yet been embedded in the field of complaint management. Therefore, this paper aims to adjust a general model for organisational learning to the concept of complaint management in order to make it operational for this field.Design/methodology/approach – The notion of organisational learning in combination with complaint management is modelled as a system. This system enabled us to analyse the practices of handling and analysing complaints within six Dutch service organisations and to assess the potential of these organisations for organisational learning.Findings – The results of the paper categorise a variety of complaint management practices along two elements of organisational learning: triggers and modes of learning (i.e. informational learning or interactive learning).Research limitations/implications – Further research should include the...

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