Managing unreasonable conduct by a complainant

This manual provides an extensive range of strategies for dealing with UCC, including in circumstances where it is not possible to terminate services to a complainant. Although it has been developed with public sector organisations in mind, it is equally applicable to customer or private sector situations.

We also offer Managing Unreasonable Complainant Conduct training.

This manual is designed to help organisations and their staff take a systematic and consistent approach to managing their interactions with complainants. It provides a series of suggestions and strategies to assist all staff members – not just frontline officers – to appropriately interact with all complainants, particularly those who are perceived to be behaving unreasonably. The strategies have been developed by complaint handlers for complaint handlers, and although the focus of this manual is on the public sector, the suggested strategies can be equally applicable to customer and private sector situations.

We define unreasonable conduct by complainants (UCC) as any behaviour by a current or former complainant which, because of its nature or frequency, raises substantial health, safety, resource or equity issues for the parties to a complaint. The parties to a complaint that might be detrimentally impacted by UCC include, the organisation responsible for handling a complaint, the case officer(s) tasked with dealing with a complaint, any subjects of complaint, the complainant himself or herself (potentially including members of their families and friends) and other complainants and service users.

The manual is not intended to tell you exactly how to deal with every situation. There is no ‘one size fits all approach’ to managing unreasonable conduct by complainants and the suggestions in this manual will not be effective in all situations. The strategies should be adapted to suit the circumstances of each case and should also supplement rather than replace existing organisational policies, procedures and protocols.

The links below are aimed at helping you to understand what UCC is, why we have developed the manual and how the manual is structured.

This section of the manual is aimed at providing you with some guidance around recognising the early signs of unreasonable conduct by complainants.

The links outlining strategies and possible responses are designed to help you to deal with interactions with complainants exhibiting certain behaviours.

The strategies are designed so you can read over the relevant topic before a call or meeting to help you to plan how you will approach conversations with a complainant. You can then read over the relevant scripted responses to get some ideas of how to respond to particular comments or approaches. If you are on the phone, you can also keep the relevant scripts with you during the call. It is important to realise these are only guides, and will not deal with all possible situations.

Finally, this section has some quick tips for responding to anger, threats and aggression.

This section of the manual is aimed at providing you with some guidance to help to manage interactions with complainants. Although the focus is on managing unreasonable conduct by complainants, much of the guidance is also relevant to day-to-day complaint handling interactions, as well as customer service more generally. This includes advice on effectively managing expectations, recognising barriers to communication and treating people with respect and dignity.

There is also some initial guidance to help you recognise the possible impact of certain cultural communication styles, as well as particular disabilities and mental illnesses.

With the continuing use of social media as a means of communication, there is also some guidance for agencies and staff on how to respond to online UCC.

This section of the manual is aimed at providing managers and supervisors with some guidance about how they can support their staff to respond to UCC. This will help those in management roles to provide a clear and consistent message to staff and provide them with the support they need to do their work. This includes some guidance around managing stress in the workplace.

It also outlines how an organisation should record and respond to incidents, as well as providing some guidance on how to lay out public offices to address some of the risks of face to face UCC.

This section of the manual provides important guidance on how and when to modify or restrict the access someone has to staff, premises or services.

These approaches should only be used sparingly, and should be clearly documented and monitored. Any decision to restrict or modify access should be in line with the organisation’s own policies and procedures.