The Solar Victoria Complaints Handling Policy sets out our approach to managing complaints and information gained from complaints helps us improve our processes, systems and services.
It ensures complaints are resolved in a fair, consistent and timely manner while maintaining a high level of customer service.
What is a Complaint?
A complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction with:
- the quality of a service provided, action taken or decision made by Solar Victoria,
- a delay or failure in providing a service, taking an action or making a decision by Solar Victoria.
How to make a Complaint
You can submit a complaint by:
Email: complaints@team.solar.vic.gov.au
Phone: please call our Customer Service team on 1300 376 393
Mail: please post to Solar Victoria Complaints Team, PO Box 104, Morwell VIC 3840
Accessibility
Solar Victoria has the following services in place to assist people with specific needs to make a complaint.
National Relay Service (NRS)
TTY (Teletypewriter) users can phone 133 677 and ask to be put through to Solar Victoria on 1300 376 393. Speak and Listen (speech-to-speech) users can phone 1300 555 727 and ask to be put through to Solar Victoria on 1300 376 393.
Interpreting Services A person can speak to us in their language by phoning the Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS National) on 131 450 and asking to be put through to Solar Victoria on 1300 376 393.
How we manage a Complaint
Solar Victoria will:
- acknowledge receipt of your complaint,
- categorise and prioritise complaints and issues in accordance with their urgency, seriousness and impact or safety related,
- endeavour to respond to the complaint or issue in a timely manner, and implement any in required actions to resolve non critical and low-medium priority cases within 20 days, and
- address each complaint in a sensitive, equitable, objective, unbiased and professional manner throughout the complaint management process.
Who is able to make a Complaint?
Anyone who has been affected by a decision or action, including a failure to make a decision or take action can make a complaint.
How we work to resolve your Complaint
We take a four-tiered approach to complaint handling, as follows:
1. First contact resolution: our customer service staff receive the complaint or issue, assess it, and resolve it immediately if possible.
2. Investigation, if required: if required: if the complaint or issue cannot be resolved in the first instance, the complaint may be referred to an internal Escalated Complaints team for investigation and resolution.
An Escalations Officer will respond to the complainant within 5 business days to resolve the complaint or advise that it is being investigated.
We aim to resolve all complaints within 20 business days, although many resolutions will be achieved well within this timeframe. Extended resolution times may be required due to the issue complexity or adviser availability.
If it takes longer than 20 business days to resolve a complaint, the Escalations Officer will contact the complainant prior to or at this time and explain why. Complaints that are not resolved within 20 business days may be escalated to the Escalated Resolutions & Correspondence Manager, if necessary, for review and action.
3. Internal review: if a complainant is not satisfied with the process or outcome of the investigation they can request an internal review.
The Escalated Resolutions & Correspondence Manager will respond to the complainant within 5 business days to advise that they are reviewing the outcome. Internal reviews that are not completed within 5 business days may be escalated, if necessary, to ensure that an outcome of the internal review is expedited.
4. Access to external option: if a complainant is not satisfied with the process or outcome of the internal review, we inform them of any external options available to them.
We will work to resolve your complaint however, if Solar Victoria is not the right organisation to respond to the complaint, we will advise the complainant of an organisation that may be able to help.
How you can monitor your Complaint
As your complaint is being managed, we aim to provide you with timely updates on the progress and actions being taken.
You can also contact us directly to follow up on the contact options available.
In the event you are not satisfied with the outcome of your complaint?
In the instance of Solar Victoria processing a complaint or issue through the full extent of the complaint management and internal escalation process and, is unable to resolve the issue to a complainant’s satisfaction, where appropriate, Solar Victoria will advise the complainant of external agencies which may be able to assist.
We will work to resolve your complaint however, if Solar Victoria is not the right organisation to respond to the complaint, we will advise the complainant of an organisation that may be able to help.
Recording Complaints
All complaints and communications with a complainant are recorded in our Customer Relationship Management System.
Anonymous Complaints
Solar Victoria will accept and respond to anonymous complaints, provided we have received enough information to do so.
Privacy
When gathering information to respond to a complaint, we will only:
use it to deal with the complaint or address systemic issues arising from the complaint,
disclose it in a de-identified format when disclosing data to the public,
share it with staff on a need to know basis.
Solar Victoria is committed to protecting your privacy, you can read our Privacy Statement on our website at www.solar.vic.gov.au/privacy.
How we Report and Learn from Complaints
We analyse our complaints data and produce reports to help us to take action to reduce complaints or improve services. Insights, Trends and Performance reports are shared across the business and with Senior Management.
Unreasonable Complaint Conduct (UCC)
We recognise that people who demonstrate challenging behaviour often have a legitimate grievance. Our team members will continue to deal with complaints on their merits. At the same time, we are committed to providing a safe and healthy workplace in using our resources efficiently and fairly. Solar Victoria staff are expected to treat people with courtesy and respect. We expect this courtesy to be returned.
- We do not tolerate behaviour that is offensive, demeaning, abusive, threatening or consumes disproportionate resources.
- Solar Victoria aims to deal with challenging behaviour in a way that is fair and balances the interest of applicants, retailers, installers, representatives of organisations or industry bodies, our team member, our organisation and members of the public.
- ‘Unreasonable behaviour is when:
- because of its nature or frequency, it raises health, safety, resource, or equity issues (i.e. consumes disproportionate resources),
- nuisance contact causing unreasonable repeated inconvenience or annoyance, for Solar Victoria, our staff and other people who use our services.
- ‘Unreasonable Complainant Conduct’ is when a person, organisation or their representative’s including applicants, retailers, installers, industry bodies and members of the public, behaviour becomes unreasonable and includes:
- consuming disproportionate resources creating equity issues,
- offensive, demeaning, abusive, aggressive, or threatening language or actions,
- threats or actions of violence or harm to staff, other people, themselves or property
Solar Victoria will implement a graduated staging approach when managing Unreasonable Complainant Conduct.
Stage 1 Prevent: where possible
Stage 2 Respond: to challenging behaviour
Stage 3 Manage: behaviour that is unreasonable or becomes unreasonable complainant conduct and issue a conduct warning letter if applicable.
Stage 4 Limit: access as a last resort
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