Understanding Complaint Management in SAP

Customer dissatisfaction with some percentage of provided products and services is an unhappy fact of life in organizations. When this occurs, the sales organization is required to provide solutions to clients in a variety of ways. In some cases, the customer may just try to return the product for credit. In other cases, the product may be damaged in transit, and it is not worth returning to the organization. In this case, the client may request the credit for the damaged equipment.

In SAP Sales and Distribution, Customer complaints are a part of any sales cycle in business. Complaint processing and resolution thus need to be covered in system and in long term lead to customer delight. In Sales & Distribution there are various methods provided for processing Customer complaints depending on the scenario. Analysis for complaints is also provided in system as standard feature.

Free of Charge Subsequent Delivery

If a Customer complains of receipt of wrong quantity, additional quantity can be sent free o charge via this sales order.Although it is called FOC Subsequent delivery it is a sales order which is created with reference to original sales order and involves further delivery creation. In Standard system ‘SDF ’is order type for Subsequent delivery free of charge.

Returns

Returns are a normal part of sales in any business. A return in system is a sales document used in complaint processing when customer sends the goods back due to various reasons.

• If customer sends goods back which had been sold a return is created in system along with reason for the material.
• Goods are taken back in stock and a credit memo is issued to customer for the amount billed after verification of complaint and goods is carried out.
• Return is another type of Sales document and is processed similar to sales documents

Credit memo Request

When a customer requests for a return, it is treated as a type of order and handled in R/3’s sales function. While products may be returned in R/3 without a corresponding past order, in our example, we will assume that a previous order has been placed and is being returned.

A credit memo is also treated as a type of order and handled in R/3’s sales function. In this instance, the customer may have received a product that was damaged or ruined on delivery. Hence, it makes little sense to return the actual product or material, given that the customer’s version of events is accepted. We likewise assume that a previous order has been placed and credit is being sought.

Returns and credit memos are another kind of sales order documents in SAP and they are also created in the same VA01 transaction which is used to created any other kind of regular order including debit memos.

Debit memo Request

Debit Memo Request is a sales document used in complaints processing to request debit for a customer. If for example the price calculated for a customer was too low due to some reason, a debit memo request can be created. Debit memo request is like another sales document like standard order which is used to create the debit memo when the amount is actually debited to customer. DR is order type for Credit memo requests in standard system.

Blocking or Rejecting Complaints

Blocking Complaints
In system via customizing it can be set to have default delivery or billing blocks for such order types used for complaint processing. This control feature allows checks to be carried out on complaints before processing.
Rejecting Complaints
Various reasons of rejection are available which can be used to reject complaints at Item level in sales order. These can be communicated to customer via outputs.

Return Items to the Vendor

When you are posting a Goods Receipt for a PO, you can also enter items that you want to return to the vendor. To do this, you no longer have to reference the purchase order with which the goods were originally delivered. From the item overview, choose 161 (Return for PO) as the default value for the Movement Type. Enter the data for the return item(s) and post the document