Understanding complaining, service failure identification and service recovery via social media

Purpose

The purpose of this research is to explore motivations and behaviour of consumer complaining via social media and in turn provide a robust framework for dealing with such complaints. Retailers cannot satisfy every customer and have learnt the value of managing their complaints systems carefully. However, social media has been a game changer. User-Generated Content has become the norm, with customers exhorted to be brutally honest to help other customers make better decisions. Many retailers have embraced social media but are finding that they are being hijacked by irate customers online. This even affects those organisations with no or limited social media presence as their products and/or services are discussed on social media irrespective, showing the importance of the issue for all customer-focused firms.
The study of customer complaining behaviour has received significant research to date, resulting in numerous service recovery models. However, these frameworks are all pre-social media, a medium which has not only created new channels for consumers to complain but has intensified the ramifications of this complaining behaviour. The central role of these empowered consumers has led to a need for both conceptual and empirical research exploring consumer complaining behaviour on social media.

Design/Methodology/Approach

The research design employed in this study is a mixed methods approach. Data from multiple sources, namely netnographic observations, consumer and retailer interviews and questionnaire are triangulated to investigate the motivations and characteristics of consumers’ complaints on social media.

Findings

The major findings of this research include; customers complain via social media as they recognise the public nature of the medium and expect success because of this. Conversely, they are conscious of their own online persona and can use humour to disparage the complaint to maintain and protect their own online reputation. Furthermore, customers use social media as a channel of complaint as result of failure of service recovery in other more traditional channels (i.e. double deviation) and wish to escalate their grievance to a more public and potentially successful platform.

Implications

The implications of this research are that firms need not only to identify and understand humorous social media complaints as an opportunity to publicly rectify service failures, but also as a chance to showcase brand personality and values to their online audience. Conversely, organisations must ensure other more traditional complaints management or service recovery systems and procedures are equally, if not more efficient, to ensure customer complaints do not escalate to the public and potential viral social media online arena.