Complaint registration by phone, with a case file at the end of it

Some desks take complaints, not bookings. VokaLQ answers those calls, asks until it has the details that make a complaint actionable, and registers each one as a case: a category, a place, a description in the caller’s own words, and a stage your staff move it through. What the office gets is a board it can work and a report it can count, instead of a notebook.

In short

  • Each call is registered as a case: complainant, place, category, priority and a full description.
  • Six stages from new to resolved, with an append-only follow-up trail underneath.
  • The agent does not read out a reference number and does not promise a callback — the desk decides both.
  • Works in Malayalam as well as English, and the board carries both labels.
  • Exports to CSV, and reports on what came in, what closed and how long it took.
A complaint registered as a case, on the phone
InboundTue 20:14 IST · 01:12

caller ഒരു പരാതി പറയാനാ. ഓഫീസിൽ പലവട്ടം വന്നിട്ടും ഒന്നും ആയില്ല.

vokalq പറയൂ, ഞാൻ വിശദമായി എഴുതിയെടുക്കാം. ഏത് സ്ഥലത്തെ കാര്യമാണ്, പേര് പറയാമോ?

caller സുനിത. ഞങ്ങളുടെ വാർഡിലെ കാര്യമാണ് — അപേക്ഷ കൊടുത്തിട്ട് മൂന്ന് മാസമായി, ഒരു മറുപടിയുമില്ല.

Case
Registered · #0142
Stage
New
Category
From the office’s own list
Priority
Normal
Attached
Recording + transcript

No reference number read out and no callback promised. The desk decides both.

A complaint in a notebook cannot be counted

The usual system is a diary by the phone, a few WhatsApp messages and somebody’s memory. It works until the person who took the call is on leave, or until somebody asks how many complaints came in last month and how many were resolved, and there is no way to answer that is not a guess.

The complaints themselves are rarely the problem. The problem is that nothing about them is written in a shape anybody can filter, assign, chase or report on.

Where a phoned-in complaint ends up
Can you filter itCan you report on itSurvives staff changes
A diary by the phoneNoBy counting pagesOnly if the handwriting does
WhatsApp messagesBy scrollingNoOn one person’s phone
A spreadsheetYesIf somebody maintains itUntil two people edit it
VokaLQ complaints boardBy stage, category and placeRegistered, closed, days to closeAppend-only trail per case

What gets registered on the call

The agent does not register a one-line complaint. It asks follow-up questions until it has who is complaining, where the matter is, and a description with enough detail for a staff member to act on without ringing back to ask what was meant. Something urgent is marked urgent.

Then it writes the case. It does not read a reference number back to the caller and it does not promise that somebody will ring them, because both of those are decisions the office makes, not the phone line — and a promise made by an agent that the desk did not agree to is worse than no promise.

  • Who called, and the number to reach them on.
  • Where the matter is, in the terms the office routes by.
  • What the complaint is, in the caller’s own words rather than as a summary.
  • A category from the office’s own list, and an urgent flag when it applies.
  • The call it came from, with the recording and the transcript attached to the case.

Working the board

Every case moves through six stages — new, verified, forwarded, in progress, resolved, rejected — and the stage is the answer to the only question a citizen ever asks, which is where their complaint has reached.

Under each case is an append-only trail: who did what, when, and what they found. It is deliberately not editable, because the value of a case history is that it survives the person who wrote it.

The board exports to CSV and reports on itself — what came in, what closed, how long the closed ones took. That is the monthly report, produced rather than assembled.

What a registered complaint moves through
A complaint moves through six stages: new, verified, forwarded, in progress, and then either resolved or rejected. Staff add a follow-up note at every stage, and the notes cannot be edited or removed.NewVerifiedForwardedIn progressResolveda follow-up note at every stage · append-only · nothing overwrittenor rejected

What it is set up for, and what it is not

This module was built first for public service desks handling land and revenue complaints, where a complaint has to be routed by district, taluk and village and the categories are fixed by the domain rather than invented per call. The fields the agent asks for and the category list it chooses from are configured per office when it is set up, not typed freely on the call.

It is not a general IT helpdesk with SLAs, ticket queues and escalation timers, and it does not decide whether a complaint has merit. It registers, routes and tracks. The judgement stays with the office, which is where the people who can actually fix things sit.

Speaks English · Malayalam · Tamil · Hindi · Arabic · plans from ₹5,499/month

FAQ

Complaint desk: common questions

Can an AI take complaints over the phone?

Yes. It answers the call, asks follow-up questions until it has the complainant, the place and a detailed description, and registers the complaint as a case on a board your staff work through. The recording and the transcript stay attached to the case, so nothing depends on what the person who took the call remembers.

Does the caller get a reference number?

Not from the agent. Each case carries a reference number on the board for staff to quote, but the line does not read one back and does not promise a callback, because who gets rung back and when is the office’s decision. An agent that hands out promises the desk has not agreed to creates more complaints than it registers.

What stages does a complaint move through?

Six: new, verified, forwarded, in progress, resolved and rejected. The stage is what answers the question every complainant eventually asks, and it is what the monthly report counts.

Can staff add their own notes to a case?

Yes, and the trail is append-only. Notes and status changes accumulate under the case rather than overwriting each other, so the history of what was done survives staff changes and cannot be quietly tidied up later.

Does the complaints desk work in Malayalam?

Yes. Callers are answered in Malayalam, and the board carries both English and Malayalam labels for the stages and categories — English for exports, reports and anything a developer reads, Malayalam because that is the language the office and the citizen are actually working in.

Can we get a monthly report out of it?

Yes. The board reports on itself — what was registered, what closed, and the average time to close — and everything exports to CSV, so the monthly report is produced rather than assembled by hand the night before it is due.