From complainants to champions: enhancing odour complaint management systems

• Small modifications to complaint processes improves community engagement • Third normal form normalization is suitable for all industry complaint databases • Formalised collaboration within water industry will enhance community engagement • Improving complaint processing addresses emerging sustainability challenges The most common community complaint for the wastewater industry relates to malodour. But how are those complaints recorded, analysed, and used? This is a crucial question in the current community-wastewater industry context where odour complaints continue to increase in severity and numeracy. Additional pressures are also beginning to be experienced as the relationship between the wastewater industry and community transform due to sustainability and the circular economy as well as increasing expectations related to local community environment. This research investigates the complaint management systems and practices for six wastewater treatment companies. In their current form, the complaint management systems and practices are insufficient to encapsulate the qualities necessary for effective odour complaint logging, and that odour complaint information was not used systematically, if at all. We propose an enhanced complaint management system supporting effective environmental complaint logging in a method that can be universally applied, readily implementable, and simple to share and understand. Complaint management can serve as an effective and comprehensive data stream to help guide policy and behave as an improvement to community engagement in its own right. In this way, complaint management systems and practices are readily translated into community monitoring platforms. Additionally, providing a policy for future business to business communication requirements, as well as expanding the wastewater industry’s knowledge and expertise pool are provided by effective complaint management. Wastewater companies should adopt a shared, reflexive, and proactive approach towards community complaints and engagement in order to meet rising and multi-faceted challenges.