4 Managing Expectations

Intake are expected to manage the expectations of all complainants.

Advisors must provide a clear explanation of our processes, any timescales involved or anything else that may affect the handling of a complaint.

This includes identifying any potential jurisdictional issues. However, Intake only have delegated authority to decide whether a complaint is premature and to accept a complaint orally rather than in writing.

If potential jurisdictional issues are identified, then the complaint should be sent straight to the Assessment Team. Advisors should do this by explaining that an Assessment investigator will need to review the case to make the necessary judgement about jurisdiction (and prematurity if applicable)

In these circumstances, advisor’s need to be careful to use ‘non-committal’ wording so as not to create any formal decisions on their part or to raise the complainant’s expectations.

The team is not an update service for cases that have moved beyond the Intake stage. Advisors are generally unable to assist in these circumstances and the caller should be asked to send a message through their OCS account if they have one, which includes unallocated cases. If not, the caller should be advised to redial and contact the case owner directly.