One complaints system and twelve brand websites for a multi-brand food manufacturer.

The client.

A food manufacturer with a portfolio of household-name brands, made across several sites. Its products are in most British kitchens, which means its customer care team hears from a great many people.

The problem.

Every food manufacturer receives complaints. What matters is what happens next: whether the customer gets a proper answer, and whether the factory finds out what went wrong.

With many brands and several sites, that was hard. Complaints arrived through different routes for each brand. Tracing one back to a product, a batch and a factory took too long, and seeing a pattern across brands took longer still.

Packaged quality systems existed, but they were built around a generic process. The client already had a process, shaped by years of audits and retailer requirements. It wanted software that followed it.

What we built.

One complaints system shared by every brand and every site. Here is what happens to a single complaint.

1. 01
   It is logged once. Whatever route it arrived by, the complaint goes into one queue, in the client's own categories.
2. 02
   It is tied to the product. The complaint is linked to the product and batch, using product data drawn from the client's ERP, so nobody retypes a product code.
3. 03
   It goes to the right factory. The system routes it to the responsible site for investigation, with a deadline and an owner.
4. 04
   The cause is recorded. The investigation and any corrective action are tracked until they are closed.
5. 05
   The customer hears back. The reply is produced from the client's own templates.
6. 06
   It becomes a number. Each complaint feeds trend reports by product, site and category, including complaints per million units.

The supplier side.

Some complaints lead back to an ingredient or a packaging supplier. The same system holds supplier certificates, specifications and questionnaires, and chases each one before it expires, so the technical team is not maintaining a spreadsheet of dates.

Twelve websites as well.

The relationship did not stop at internal systems. We build and maintain twelve of the client's brand websites on Umbraco, under a monthly retainer.

Food websites carry a responsibility that most do not. Ingredients, allergens and nutrition have to be right on every product page. We hold them as structured data, entered once and shown consistently, so the marketing team can add a product or a seasonal range without risking what the page says.

Where it is now.