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“If a client made a complaint today, would our team know exactly what to do — and would the client understand what happens next?”
For practices, now is a good time to review your existing complaints policy against the CMA’s requirements and the RCVS’s expectations.
Complaints are an unavoidable part of running any veterinary practice. Even where a team has provided excellent care, a client may still feel unhappy about their experience, communication, costs, waiting times or the outcome of treatment.
The important thing is not simply whether your practice receives complaints, but how you respond to them.
Following the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) investigation into the veterinary services market, expectations around complaint handling are becoming clearer. Veterinary practices need a complaints process that is accessible, transparent and genuinely designed to help resolve concerns.
Make your complaints policy easy to find
A complaints procedure should not be something a client has to ask for repeatedly or search through pages of terms and conditions to find. Your practice should make its complaints process readily available, including on your website. It is also sensible to make clients aware of the policy when they register with the practice and have information available within the practice itself.
The policy should answer some very straightforward questions:
- How do I make a complaint?
- Who should I contact?
- Can I complain verbally, in writing or by email?
- What happens after I make a complaint?
- When will I receive a response?
- Who will investigate my complaint?
- What happens if I am not happy with the response?
- Is independent mediation available?
The RCVS already expects practices to have a complaints procedure and to provide clients with information about how complaints are handled.
Under the CMA’s new requirements, first opinion practices within scope will also need to publish their complaints process on their website, provide this to clients at key points (registration and invoicing) and explain what clients can expect from the VCMS process.
Keep the process simple
A complaint policy should not feel like a legal document written to discourage people from complaining. The complaint policy should support clients to ask questions and raise a concern in a straightforward way, and ensure the practice team are clear on what happens next and who is responsible for each stage.
For example, you could say:
“If you are unhappy with any aspect of the service or care provided by our practice, please let us know. We would like the opportunity to understand your concerns and try to resolve them.”
Your policy should provide a clear email address, postal address or other appropriate contact method.
It is also important to consider accessibility. Not every client will be comfortable making a formal written complaint. Your team should know how to respond when someone raises a concern over the telephone or in person and how that concern should be recorded and progressed.
Give your team the opportunity to resolve concerns early
Not every expression of dissatisfaction needs to become a formal complaint. Sometimes a concern can be resolved quickly through a conversation with the client.
The CMA’s requirements recognise this. Practices should seek to resolve complaints during the normal course of business where possible, for example through a telephone conversation or discussion at the practice.
A client who is upset about a misunderstanding may simply want someone to listen, explain what happened or acknowledge that their experience was disappointing. Giving your team the confidence and training to deal with concerns appropriately can prevent issues from escalating unnecessarily.
However, teams should also understand when a concern needs to move into the formal complaints process.
Be clear about when a complaint becomes an “actionable complaint”
This is particularly important under the CMA’s new requirements. Where a complaint cannot be resolved within five working days of being received, it becomes an actionable complaint. At that point, the practice must acknowledge the complaint in writing within five working days. Your policy should therefore explain this process so that clients understand what happens if their concern cannot be resolved quickly.
For example:
“We will always try to resolve concerns as quickly as possible. Where we are unable to resolve your complaint within five working days, we will acknowledge your complaint in writing and begin our formal complaints process.”
One of the biggest frustrations for anyone making a complaint is not knowing what is happening. Your complaint policy should therefore set out clear timescales.
Under the CMA’s new requirements, once a complaint becomes an actionable complaint, the practice must provide a full written response within eight weeks. Your policy should explain this clearly. It should also explain what will happen if an investigation is particularly complex and more time is required. Clients should not simply be left waiting without an update.
A good complaints policy should make clear that:
- the complaint will be acknowledged;
- the practice will investigate it fairly;
- the client will receive updates where appropriate;
- a full written response will be provided within the required timescale; and
- if more time is needed, the client will be told why and what will happen next.
Explain who will deal with the complaint, clients should know who is responsible for handling their complaint. Your policy should identify the appropriate role or person, such as the Practice Manager / Complaints Lead rather than simply telling clients to “contact the practice”.
Tell clients what happens if the complaint cannot be resolved
This is one of the areas that has received particular attention from the CMA.
Your complaints policy should not simply end with “Our decision is final.” Instead, clients should be told about the options available if the complaint cannot be resolved through the practice’s own complaints process. The RCVS code also requires information to be provided about the RCVS role in investigating serious professional misconduct.
Under the CMA’s new requirements, relevant first opinion practices will need to participate in mediation in good faith where an eligible complaint has not been resolved in-house and the pet owner wishes to proceed with mediation.
The RCVS is also required to provide a decision tree explaining the routes available to pet owners when they are seeking resolution or redress. This will need to be given to clients and displayed in the practice. Your practice’s complaints information will therefore need to explain these options clearly and in a way that clients can understand.
Make sure your whole team understands the policy
A well written complaints policy is of little value if nobody in the practice knows how to use it.
Every member of the team should understand:
- what counts as a complaint or concern;
- who the complaints lead is;
- how complaints should be recorded;
- what they should say when a client is upset;
- when a complaint should be escalated;
- what information should and should not be shared;
- how confidentiality and personal data are managed; and
- what the practice’s formal timescales are.
It is particularly important that reception and client-care teams understand the process, as they are often the first people to hear that a client is unhappy.
A simple checklist for your veterinary practice
Your complaints policy should ideally include:
- How clients can complain
- Who deals with complaints
- How informal concerns are handled
- What happens when a complaint becomes formal/actionable
- Written acknowledgement timescales
- The eight-week timeframe for a full response
- How clients will be kept updated
- How complaints are investigated
- How the final response will be provided
- What happens if the complaint cannot be resolved
- Information about mediation and other routes to redress
- How complaints are recorded
- How complaints are reviewed for learning
- How the policy can be accessed online and in practice
The CMA’s changes represent an important shift in the way complaints are expected to be handled across the veterinary sector. But compliance should not be the only objective. A good complaints process should give clients confidence that their concerns will be listened to, investigated fairly and dealt with within a clear timeframe. It should also give veterinary teams a structured way of managing difficult conversations and, importantly, learning from them.
