Re: CTC Membership Services
Posted: 18 Nov 2009, 4:22pm
As promised previously, here is an official explanation as to why members of NO rarely become involved in forum debates.
Please note that in the "please let me know" bit, the "me" is your councillor or K.Mayne. Please don't take this up with the forum moderators - we are only the messengers and are not in a position to influence anything.
The source that this quote is cited from is to be found below it - the quote is the second section from the bottom. You will notice that some of the quote has time dependent information in it, as such the original might change in the future.
http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=3655
edit: added the explanatory section to the quote.
Please note that in the "please let me know" bit, the "me" is your councillor or K.Mayne. Please don't take this up with the forum moderators - we are only the messengers and are not in a position to influence anything.
The source that this quote is cited from is to be found below it - the quote is the second section from the bottom. You will notice that some of the quote has time dependent information in it, as such the original might change in the future.
CTC Complaints Procedure and Forums.
Kevin Mayne, CTC Director, 18th November 2009.
The Moderator has asked me to clarify two issues in relation to how CTC’s complaints procedure records complaints and the monitoring of complaints on the CTC Forum.
Background
CTC’s Complaints Procedure is a policy of CTC Council. It is operated by staff on behalf of the Council. As Director I am expected to maintain the process to their expectations and to ensure that it is applied across all areas of CTC, excluding CTC Holidays and Tours which has to have its own procedures for legal reasons.
It is run as one process to cover all complaints on all topics including complaints or disciplinary issues that arise at member group level.
How does complaint monitoring work?
The full complaints procedure is initiated if a member formally asks for it to be used but complaints monitoring starts at our first point of contact with a member.
We expect the vast majority of complaints to be dealt with by the person who is contacted by the member. We try to record every contact with a member on their record even if the matter is immediately resolved. Everything considered a failure of CTC service is recorded as such even if the member doesn’t complain. Therefore we are recording detail such as missing cards or magazines as complaints to get a picture of any underlying level of concern.
If a member escalates a complaint to their councillor or to me I expect to see if they have previously contacted the membership department or national office. In all but a few cases I find that the record is present. If there is no record the issue of record keeping itself is escalated within the relevant department.
If a complaint is serious or isn’t dealt with adequately at first contact then we encourage members to contact me directly. I see all the complaints as they arrive and I deal with them or issue them to a relevant staff to deal with in my name. Again I record them in our contacts system to ensure I have a handle on the issues I deal with.
If a member doesn’t like my handling of their complaint or believes that this is an issue of CTC policy there are further avenues of escalation.
Monitoring complaints on the forum.
Both full Council and Council Committee which oversees the Complaints Procedure have debated the monitoring of complaints on the forum a number of times. The current position is set out here, but we are going to debate it again at a forthcoming Management Committee meeting so if you have views please let me know.
On each occasion the subject has been debated it was concluded that staff could not effectively deal with complaints raised on the forum, a policy that is also applied to members’ letters to Cycle magazine. Moderators and the Editor have been briefed on this policy and asked to remind users of the procedure whenever appropriate.
The main reasons that staff should not participate were:
-The forum cannot provide adequate record keeping, privacy or data protection controls which are provided by the complaints procedure.
-Some of our services such as insurance are externally regulated and we have to respond directly to the complainant.
-The forum is a place for debate and comment, Council felt it is an inappropriate use of staff time to have debates about complaints in this environment.
-Staff work to the policies of Council and it is inappropriate for staff to be commenting on Council policy in this environment.
http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=3655
edit: added the explanatory section to the quote.