Complaint handling: shorter response times expected on social media
Consumers are increasingly harnessing the power of social media and using this new channel to communicate with brands. Communicating complaints is no exception to this trend and voicing dissatisfaction seems to shift from traditional channels (phone, email, face-to-face) to social media channels. Few studies exist on those online complaining behaviors and in particular on consumers’ expectations as far as reaction time on channels like twitter and facebook are concerned. A new study, yet to be released,...
How to handle a complaint perfectly
A colleague recently sent me an answer to a complaint he had sent to Delamaison.fr, an online shop specializing in furniture. As we recently discussed on this blog, most firms do everything wrong when it comes to handling complaints. But not Delamaison.fr which knows how to handle a complaint and scores 100% on our complaint satisfaction test. Here’s the answer, followed by our analysis. If you want to improve your complaint handling practices, this email can...
RAGE 2015 study : customers more dissatisfied than ever with complaint handling
The 2015 edition of the RAGE study is out … and guess what ? Post-complaint satisfaction has never been so low and firms seem to keep doing the wrong things about complaint handling. Complaint handling practices are obviously wrong in most firms and as the results below show, particular attention should be given to the quality of the interaction between the customer and the employee. Customer satisfaction is essential. Only for our subscribers: exclusive analyses and...
Managers are from Mars and Customers are from Venus
This is the title of an amazing presentation given at Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management in October. This presentation aimed at explaining the 8/80 paradox, namely: 80% of managers state that they give their customers a great buying experience But only 8% of customers state that they get a great buying experience (Meyer & Schwager 2007) Some background info One of complaint handling / customer satisfaction most important researcher came to Belgium on 12...
Ryanair: the best complaint letter ever sent + tips to get compensated
Complaints are important for companies aiming at improving customer satisfaction and loyalty. Yet, most companies don’t answer complaints (50-60% according to the interview of Prof. Davidow you can listen below), which is a very frustrating experience for complainants. This is what you should expect if you ever want to complaint to Ryanair. What you also may expect from Ryanair’s answer to your complaint is a defensive attitude. Based on my long complaining experience and the numerous...
50% of companies do not apologise when they respond to a complaint
Here are the results of an analysis we conducted on a sample of 226 companies that responded to an online complaint posted on the French-language forum Les Arnaques, probably the most active and most substantial in the field in Europe (now closed but archived). We presented these results as well as a proposal for a new conceptual model of politeness analysis at the 5th International Conference on Rhetoric and Narratives held on 25-27 March 2013 at...
Customer retaliation can be funny
Free, the French telecommunication company, launched a few days ago its unlimited mobile phone offer in France for just 19,99€/month. Soon after the launch Free announced that more than a million customers had resigned from their mobile provider to switch to Free. Although the switch process is most of the time silent, Free seems to have unleashed the retaliation creativity of some customers. Look at this amazing example of a group of young Orange customers (the...
Paul bakeries: when service and brand image do not match
Paul … an oasis of gastronomy in a culinary desert. Everything is made to remind you the long forgone past of tasteful products: sales point are covered with oak-like veneer, decorated with pieces of furniture that could fit in your grandmother’s interior. Even the door of the garbage room is painted in an artificially aged green lavish veneer. All those clichés work pretty well I must confess. Paul is like a Starbucks. If you want to...
The dark side of cocreation
During the EMAC2010 Johannes Gebauer (Innsbruck University, Austria) presented an interesting and quite unusual topic. Under the title « the dark side of co-creation » Johannes presented the results of a research carried out on the Spar business case. For those who don’t know Spar it’s a European group of proximity stores under franchising agreements. I thank Johannes who kindly accepted to put his slides at disposal to make them available to my blog’s visitors. The business case...
