A complaint that arrives in a chat window is already a complaint

It does not become a complaint when it reaches a form

The clock starts when the patient writes, not when the right department receives it. An assistant that replies "please use our complaints form" has told someone already angry to do more work, and a proportion of them will do something else instead. Take it where it lands, in their words, and make the handover the assistant's problem rather than theirs.

Verbatim beats summary, and the timestamp matters

Whoever handles this next needs what was actually said, not a paraphrase of its sentiment. Keep the patient's own wording, the time it arrived, and any detail that fixes the event in the diary, because a complaint about a specific afternoon is answerable and a complaint about a general impression is not. This is also the difference between a record you can act on and one you can only apologise for.

Do not concede the facts, and do not deny them either

An apology that accepts a version of events the practice has not checked is a liability, and a defence of events nobody has checked is worse. The line that works in both directions is an apology for the experience and a commitment about the process: sorry that the visit went that way, here is who will look at it, here is when. Write that sentence once and let the assistant use it.

Route to a person, not to a queue

"The relevant team has been notified" is where complaints go to die, and patients can tell. Name the role that will respond and the day by which it will happen, then make sure that is true. A complaint handled by a named person on a stated day rarely escalates; the same complaint acknowledged by nobody in particular frequently does.