Digital Complaint Box System

Abstract: Most colleges, offices, and institutions still rely on old complaint-handling methods — paper forms, suggestion boxes, and emails — that are slow, hard to track, and easy to ignore. This paper introduces the Digital Complaint Box System (DCBS), a simple web-based platform that solves these problems. Any user can open the website, fill in a short form, and submit a complaint in seconds. If they do not want to share their identity, they can do so anonymously. Admins get a secure, private dashboard where they can see every complaint, update its progress (Pending, In Progress, or Resolved), and manage everything from one place. The moment an admin changes a status, the user sees the update on their screen automatically — no refreshing needed. The system was built using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the front end; Node.js to handle the server logic; and Google Firebase to store data and manage logins. We tested it across eight real-world scenarios — submitting complaints, logging in as admin, going anonymous, checking on a mobile phone, and watching real-time updates — and every test passed. Compared to paper systems, emails, or expensive enterprise tools, DCBS is faster, more transparent, and free to deploy. This paper walks through why the system was needed, how it was designed and built, what the test results showed, and what we plan to add in the future.

Keywords: Complaint Management System; Web Application; Firebase Realtime Database; Node.js; Grievance Resolution; Three-Tier Architecture; Institutional Transparency.