The 5 star strategy

The essence of an excellent organization includes an equally excellent quality assurance. But even this does not protect against negative customer feedback. It is probably only in the quality of the complaint management that the operational excellence of the departments responsible for it becomes apparent. Cold coffee, you mean? Not at all, according to management consultant Zehra Sirin. With "The 5 Star Strategy" she has written a book about complaint management in the online age. Negative customer feedback is more common today than is generally assumed. After all, online reviews are written quickly and are becoming increasingly important, especially since many companies even invite their customers to comment on the service they have experienced via their online presence.

Complaint management: Five steps to five stars

The book provides a wealth of practical tips on how companies can establish a functioning complaints management system. Each chapter has a star, i.e. the reader or the company can earn an additional star for each chapter implemented. This royal road begins with the development and choice of a complaint strategy, leads over complaint treatment and - evaluation finally up to the 5-star strategy, which culminates in a customer relations management on basis of customer complaints and on-line tools. The author provides an introduction to the basics of complaint management and points out in particular "the direct connection between customer satisfaction/orientation and customer complaints", as she writes in the preface.

Practical manual

The strengths of the book lie not only in the high practical relevance, but also in the solid theoretical foundation. The most diverse CIP tools for application in complaint management are presented in equal measure and practical instructions for action are derived from them. Checklists round off each chapter, so that readers can check for themselves at the end of a chapter how close they are to obtaining an additional star and what still needs to be done. In an appendix, sample templates (e.g. a simple 8D report), an ISO 10002 guide and a useful glossary are also presented. Graphics and some real-world examples serve as additional explanations. However, a few more best-practice examples could perhaps provide further illustrative material for one or the other reader.

Via good customer relations to higher business excellence

The book is more than just reading. As a practical guide, it is intended above all for those groups of people who want to take systematic complaint management in their company into their own hands. These can be those responsible for quality management, employees with customer contact and, last but not least, managers who see complaint management as an instrument for corporate management.

Zehra Sirin: The 5 Star Strategy. Excellent complaint management in times of online reviews.
Redline publishing house Munich, 2017. 248 pages, hardcover.
ISBN 978-3-86881-641-9