Complaints about service delivery – how we handle these complaints

The Office receives complaints about a wide range of matters. Often people complain about the attitude, tone, perceived rudeness of staff members in agencies we oversight. People also complain about how services are delivered. When the main issue in these complaints is about the way that a service was provided, including by a staff member, we call these complaints Service Delivery complaints.

When we receive complaints, one of the things we consider is whether we are likely to achieve a practical outcome if we take further action. A practical outcome may include improvement to a policy or processes, resolution of a process issue with an agency, amendment to an unfair policy or an apology where something has gone wrong.

Our powers allow us to look at factors like processes, policies and procedures, but do not enable us to consider or make recommendations relating to employment matters. Sometimes people complain to us and tell us that the outcome they are seeking is for the staff member in an agency to be reprimanded or to have their employment terminated. This is an employment matter and is not an available outcome. This means we do not look into these matters.

We understand it can be frustrating if a staff member is rude or provides poor quality customer service. While the Office does not always investigate complaints about service delivery, there are other ways that the Office seeks to influence best practice. This includes our published Better Practice Complaint Handling Guide and our publications. View our Publications and resources page.

We assess every complaint we receive to determine what action is required. In some cases, we may further assess or investigate complaints about service delivery matters. For example, if the staff conduct has significantly impacted the complainant’s ability to access the services of the agency or entity and is a process issue, where the agency does not appear to be acting in accordance with its own laws or processes, or where there appears to be a gap or an error in the processes that the staff member is following that has resulted in the poor service.

When complainants have concerns about how staff who work at the Office have managed their complaints or the service we provided, we have separate processes to allow people to complain to us, about us. Find out more about how we manage complaints about us.