Who should handle customer complaints?

Everyone should handle customer complaints. Of course, not everyone is going to be equally involve in customer service, nor should each employee be trained in the most specialised service. We do believe it is important that all employees participate to some degree - to the extent of their trainability and the extent to which they interact with the customers.
But who should handle cases that can't be resolved by a staffer on the front line? In other words, who should serve as "the manager" for a customer who demands to "speak with a manager"? Here are a couple of guideline:

• Empower your employees to be able to resolve the issue whenever possible without getting to the "manager" level.
• When unavoidable, you need the designated "manager" to stand out in 2 areas: as a sharp and eager problem solver and as a virtuoso at connecting empathically with people. If you have hired and trained appropriately, all of your staff will have some strength in these areas. But only about 1 in 10 will be unusually gifted in both areas. Those 10% should be your designated service "manager" - if indeed you choose to have such a position.

If you are going to involved the whole company in customer service, you should involved them fully: entrust them with broad discretionary powers to respond flexibly, creatively, and intensively to service errors.
So in order to keep customers happy, your people will need to be able to respond in an empowered and immediate way to service failures - without waiting for a manager's okay. This carte blanche approach has grown even more important in these days of customer rebellions Twittering out of control: Only with immediate and broad discretionary powers is there a chance your frontline employees will be able to defuse complaints before they get posted online.