As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly draft a complaints policy for your UK business.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   Someone with a licence or accountable authority has to sign this before it counts.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open a document containing your current customer terms, service description, complaint channels, staff roles and any existing complaint records or procedures.
   2. Gather the name of the responsible team, the channels customers may use, your actual acknowledgement and response targets, escalation route, record-keeping process and accessibility arrangements.
   3. Check GOV.UK and the website of any regulator, ombudsman or professional body that applies to your sector, then note the relevant guidance without asking the model to guess missing requirements.
   4. Paste the gathered information into the prompt, replacing every bracketed slot and leaving a slot marked [TO CONFIRM] where the fact is genuinely unknown.
   5. Ask the model for the policy, staff procedure, assumptions and verification checklist requested in the prompt.
   6. Compare every named role, contact route, deadline, escalation path and data-handling statement against your current process and the guidance you gathered, correcting the draft rather than accepting invented details.
   7. Send the completed draft and its checklist to a UK solicitor or relevant compliance professional where your sector is regulated, complaints carry serious consequences, or the policy makes legal or regulatory claims.
   8. Publish the approved version in the places customers and staff are told to use, then set an owner and review date in your internal records.

   Prompt

   Draft a complaints policy for a UK business using the information below. This is a working draft, not professional advice. Do not invent legal duties, regulators, deadlines, response times, contact details or internal roles. If information is missing, mark it as [TO CONFIRM] and list the question needed to complete it.
   
   Business name: [BUSINESS NAME]
   Business type and sector: [TYPE AND SECTOR]
   Customers or service users: [WHO CAN COMPLAIN]
   Products or services covered: [PRODUCTS OR SERVICES]
   Complaint definition and exclusions: [DETAILS OR LEAVE BLANK]
   How complaints can be made: [EMAIL, PHONE, FORM, POST OR OTHER CHANNELS]
   Accessibility or language arrangements: [DETAILS]
   Person or team responsible: [ROLE OR TEAM]
   Acknowledgement process and timing: [DETAILS OR LEAVE BLANK]
   Investigation process: [DETAILS]
   Response process and timing: [DETAILS OR LEAVE BLANK]
   Internal escalation or appeal route: [DETAILS]
   External escalation, ombudsman or regulator: [DETAILS OR UNKNOWN]
   Record keeping and reporting: [DETAILS]
   Personal data handling: [DETAILS]
   Relevant sector rules, contracts or guidance already identified: [DETAILS]
   
   Produce:
   1. A clear complaints policy in plain British English.
   2. Headings for purpose, scope, what counts as a complaint, how to complain, accessibility, acknowledgement, investigation, response, escalation, records and review.
   3. A short staff procedure showing who does what at each stage.
   4. A list of assumptions, [TO CONFIRM] points and possible legal or sector-specific issues that need checking.
   5. A final checklist of facts I must verify against our actual process before publishing.
   
   Keep the policy proportionate and do not claim that it satisfies UK law or sector regulation unless the supplied information supports that wording. Separate practical drafting from legal conclusions.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.