[HN Gopher] Drawbacks of engaging with customer complaints on Tw...
___________________________________________________________________
Drawbacks of engaging with customer complaints on Twitter
Author : gxs
Score : 37 points
Date : 2022-03-07 17:33 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hbr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (hbr.org)
| whit537 wrote:
| > two types of social media strategies: open strategies, in which
| firms provided public responses to at least 75% of complaints,
| and closed strategies, in which at least 75% of the time, firms
| responded with just a single message directing the complainant to
| a private forum.
|
| Consider a middle ground: direct the complainant to GitHub (or
| some other public off-Twitter channel). I wanna think this is the
| best strategy, but there's probably not enough companies doing
| this at scale to meaningfully compare.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| In many scenarios, an issue that had already been abandoned /
| denied by technical support is suddenly picked up and fixed when
| I raise a stink on Twitter. For that reason I appreciate its
| existence
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| In ~2015 we had AT&T fiber installed at our co-working space,
| AT&T had just pumped tons of money into rolling out fiber
| because Google had recently announced they were coming to our
| city. The guy who did the install had never done one before and
| he didn't mount it to the building correctly.
|
| The fiber line snapped and fell to the ground within 8 hours of
| being installed, I called the AT&T support line and was stuck
| in a recursive IVR menu where it was literally impossible to
| get ahold of anyone. After our admin tried emailing, calling
| the tech directly, calling 6-7 different support trunk numbers
| and got no response (or was routed back to the blackhole IVR
| line) we were without internet for 36 hours.
|
| I tweeted the picture of the broken fiber cable and had all the
| members retweet, we got a response within 5 mins and had
| someone out within 4 hours.
|
| I just jump straight to twitter now in _most_ CS cases with
| large companies.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| If your response to someone publicly calling out your bad
| behaviour is to try ushering them into an alley where nobody can
| see, that speaks volumes about your intent.
|
| This article presents a distasteful world-view that "Good manners
| are a display of weakness" and the best strategy if you're a no-
| good company is "Sweep it under the rug where the neighbours
| can't see". How tediously reminiscent of quiet domestic abuse.
|
| Here's another take; Most public responses to complainant's are
| insincere displays. Tepid litanies of excuses, virtue signalling,
| soft deflections, sugar coated restatements of unconscionable
| policy - these just show intransigent contempt for the
| complainant.
|
| People aren't stupid. They see right through public "perception
| management". That's why the share price drops. These companies do
| it to themselves. When in a hole it's best to stop digging. Don't
| try turning complaints about a broken company into an
| "opportunity" to self stroke and posture. People are more
| sophisticated than company PR goons imagine.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _to try ushering them into an alley where nobody can see, that
| speaks volumes about your intent._
|
| On the other hand, it can be hard to suss out details of an
| issue without exposing some sort of personal info, sometime
| _unintentionally_. I don 't think it's fair to wholly
| categorize that as a negative. Plus, if you have a problem at a
| McDonald's, are you going to shout it out loud in front of
| everyone in the store (who has bad intent there?), or talk to
| individually to someone who can fix it?
|
| It depends on the problem at hand, sure, but I also think
| people get that companies focus on just one avenue of support
| and funnel everyone there.
| kodah wrote:
| > If your response to someone publicly calling out your bad
| behaviour is to try ushering them into an alley where nobody
| can see, that speaks volumes about your intent.
|
| When people speak to individuals they speak differently than
| when they speak to a crowd. Callout culture is the manipulation
| of a direct conversation into a crowd conversation. In some
| ways that could work in a users favor but in other ways it
| could also work against them in that it makes the company drop
| any (if it existed) personal speech in favor of guarded
| corporate speak.
|
| While I think that users engaging in callout culture is fairly
| toxic, I think that what it really highlights is our need for a
| better system for arbitration. With most tech products there is
| _no_ system for arbitration and the human-based support systems
| are scarce. All that to say, I don 't really think either party
| here is engaging in "good behavior", if we're going to be
| playing behavior police. It's also somewhat likely that some of
| these bad outcomes are egged on simply by reverting to callout
| culture.
|
| The middleground I've seen to this is where companies provide a
| transcript or recording of interactions. That puts the user and
| the company on equal footing while reducing the chance of
| brigading and other bad behavior commonly used on Twitter.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| You're right Kodah, "call-out culture" is toxic. Bad choice
| of words on my part. And yes, some people delight in turning
| a genuine error or manufacturing fault into a public flogging
| spectacle of a company that can do nothing right no matter
| how sincerely it tries.
|
| What I think I object to is the calculating tone of the
| article, and the attempt to paint it as quantitative (and so
| implicitly rational) "research". Of course there are many
| interpretations of how brand value varies with visibility of
| arbitration, so I just proffered one (that maybe the PR
| people dig their own graves).
|
| > The middleground I've seen to this is where companies
| provide a transcript or recording of interactions. That puts
| the user and the company on equal footing while reducing the
| chance of brigading and other bad behavior commonly used on
| Twitter.
|
| Because of the power asymmetry I feel there is something
| sinister about a large company able to use "no-reply emails",
| stonewalling, or employ an entire legal team against an
| individual that makes it not okay to try taking a
| conversation initiated visibly to a place with less public
| legibility.
|
| I'm not a Twitter user or reader, so quite naive as to how
| bad things get there. Reliable friends tell me "it's a
| sewer". I do understand that mobs can be nobs. I have had to
| firefight product mistakes with large numbers of unhappy
| users, and yes transparency is powerful. We published the
| Slack and ticket stream on website, and that cooled hot
| tempers and even had some of the users advocating for the
| devs in comments.
| kodah wrote:
| I do think you're right that at a certain size a company
| should be able to efficiently employ humans to solve human
| problems within a system. In practice, this turns out
| nightmarish. I think that's where governmental institutions
| can play a role in setting expectations for people
| interacting with large companies, especially ones that
| provide critical infrastructure (which admittedly, is a
| growing amount). We can't just declare them all public
| utilities, so in a way I think this sort of problem
| demonstrates a need for evolution in the way we govern
| people and corporations.
| gxs wrote:
| Intuitively, I disagree with the article, but for some reason
| I'm having a hard time articulating my concerns.
|
| You've definitely helped here (helped me) and my biggest
| problem is that analysis wasn't done on the _type_ of replies.
| As you mentioned, the quality of the reply might be even more
| indicative of stock price fluctuations.
|
| In general, without seeing additional numbers and some data to
| see if there is a trend in the _sentiment_ of responses, I find
| it hard to adopt any hard and fast rule based on the article.
| iamed2 wrote:
| I've only ever engaged on Twitter when companies do not provide
| an avenue for direct customer support in private, but this has
| become more and more important over the years. Twitter provides a
| platform for public shaming; if the company directs you to a
| private channel and doesn't respond effectively there, you can
| report back publicly that the company has failed to respond. The
| situation may be changing, but in the past this has resulted in
| internal escalation and my problem was resolved in a way that was
| not possible through official private channels (if those even
| existed).
|
| IMO the best way to avoid publicly advertising when you've failed
| a customer is to provide a clear and effective private avenue for
| complaint resolution. Most people who are looking for a
| resolution will only resort to social media complaints when
| they're desperate, either because they can't figure out how to
| get help or they are being denied help and/or communication.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| munk-a wrote:
| I think folks who grew up on the internet are unaware of the
| awesome power wielded by the better business bureau and see
| Twitter as a last ditch effort to extract accountability from
| companies. This is quite fair since a lot of companies have
| massively scaled back their CS in terms of revenue expenditure on
| labour (hiring cheap overseas call centers or "helpful AI") and
| in terms of the unexpected costs those departments are allowed to
| raise - unless you seriously make the person on the other end of
| the phone's life hell you're not getting a replacement part.
|
| As a result they turn to twitter where, historically, companies
| are so shamed by the outcry and tempted by the PR potential that
| they quickly give in to demands for whatever the customer asks.
| The BBB is an amazingly effective way to signal to a company (and
| to all of their large customers) that their CS is absolute trash
| and underinvested - but, that said, shouting on twitter is
| easier.
|
| This article seems to miss the biggest point though - outside of
| the small segment of rabid twitter users, nobody gives a damn
| what's going on there except for the occasional meme that makes
| it over to Reddit. I have no idea why companies would be
| concerned with their "brand presence" on twitter - practically
| nobody who isn't going to complain about you is going to see any
| of that.
| xwdv wrote:
| No one cares about BBB these days.
| munk-a wrote:
| I disagree - BBB will get you a response pretty darn quickly.
| It's a pretty common B2B rating platform so most businesses
| take their image there a lot more serious than twitter.
|
| Just because it's not a post-tech boom company doesn't mean
| it's irrelevant now that we've got the internet.
| Lascaille wrote:
| US-centric advice.
| nosefrog wrote:
| Can't access the study, but the article doesn't elaborate on how
| they're able to make the jump from correlation to causation
| ("companies that respond to 75% of complaints on twitter openly
| also tend to fall in brand quality metrics" -> "responding to
| complaints on twitter openly cause companies to fall in brand
| quality metrics"), and they also don't talk about the effect
| size.
| hammock wrote:
| To contribute a potential confounder, pasting this from another
| comment: "I've only ever engaged on Twitter when companies do
| not provide an avenue for direct customer support in private"
| DHPersonal wrote:
| I prefer to use Twitter over email for customer support inquiries
| because it creates a public record for others to discover similar
| to the Q&A section of product detail pages on e-commerce sites. I
| may not need to ask a support question at all if the answer is
| already provided via a Twitter search.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| Is there a niche for a website like stackoverflow but for
| customer complaints? If not then I call dibs
| lbotos wrote:
| BBB.org in the US. IIRC, businesses need to pay to respond on
| the platform, so it sort of feels like extortion.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| BBB has not been relevant for at least a couple decades,
| certainly not since the internet came around.
| [deleted]
| mparnisari wrote:
| how would people use it? if i have a complaint i would search
| for other people making the same complaint? even if it's
| something like "my burger was cold"?
| zeruch wrote:
| Oddly, this works for most things...except Twitter support
| itself, which is so opaque it leaves every user feeling like
| Helen Keller.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I always find it negative when company answers to complaints on
| any social media including Hacker News... That means their
| support process is entirely broken and basically they can't be
| trusted as partners.
| rfrey wrote:
| If they answer complaints on Twitter, does it follow that they
| don't support people who call the help desk, fill out a web
| form, etc.? Your position makes sense if everyone who complains
| in social media only does so because traditional support
| channels have failed them, but I don't think that's the case.
| For many people complaining on social media is the default
| first step, and a company interested in good customer support
| should monitor those channels.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I believe in two strategies with those people ignore them or
| point them to correct customer support avenue.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Why would that follow? The marketing team is pushing memes on
| twitter and you think yelling at that person on the street is
| going to get your lightbulb replaced?
|
| Unless they have a support twitter account your best bet is
| to go on the website and click content or help.
| impish19 wrote:
| Encouraging companies to embrace accountability was part of my
| motivation for working on FeatureAsk.com. Addressing customer
| complaints simply seems like an extension on it.
|
| I feel like if 10% (or x% where x is subjective) of your users
| are asking for a feature that shouldn't be too intensive for you
| to build, (or are facing a problem persistently), then how dare
| you not build it (or address the problem). And if that's the
| case, there should be opportunity for someone else to see the
| problem and come solve it either with an alternate product, or a
| 3rd party solution.
| stuart78 wrote:
| "While Delta's focus on providing customers with a seamless,
| transparent experience is admirable, our analysis suggests that
| this strategy could be dramatically increasing the public
| exposure of their negative customer interactions, and is thus
| likely having a significant negative impact on their stock price
| and brand image."
|
| That is a pretty big claim to end this paragraph on. I would be
| interested in seeing exactly how their analysis connects twitter
| to stock price, if for no reason other than that it improves
| brand image for the sample set that is me.
|
| I appreciate the candor and flying is a tough business, so of
| course there are going to be problems. What matters to me is how
| you handle those problems. Allowing these to be public lets me
| judge that behavior for myself.
| quocanh wrote:
| > We found that the more a firm responded to complaints, the more
| likely it was to fall in both value and in perceived brand
| quality.
|
| Could someone with access to the actual paper tell me if they
| instead meant firms that responded through public strategies
| versus firms that responded through closed strategies? This
| sentence implies, rather, that firms that received more
| complaints fall in value and brand quality (duh).
|
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002224292110021...
| decremental wrote:
| Imagine how much better the world would be if everyone ignored
| the losers on Twitter. Incalculable.
| Ekaros wrote:
| And if companies actually cared about their customers and
| provided prompt and effective customer service. Which includes
| giving the tools for them to solve the issues...
| alphabetting wrote:
| > We found that the more a firm responded to complaints, the more
| likely it was to fall in both value and in perceived brand
| quality
|
| I'd bet large sums of money the habits of customer support
| twitter accounts have zero effect on market cap (lol) or
| perceived brand quality among the general public (not enough
| people use twitter and pay attention to brand account behaviors
| to effect this metric)
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Makes sense to me.
|
| Tweeting is about the lowest-effort type of engagement you can
| get. It represents maybe 10 seconds of someone's time, and
| should be valued accordingly. It is unverifiable, and appeals
| to whiners, attention-seekers, scammers, astro-turfers and
| other people you'd rather not have around. Why give it any
| credibility by responding?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-03-07 23:01 UTC)