I call it the Online Court of Customer Dissatisfaction (OCCD). It is the place customers drag a business to, when things have not gone as per the customer’s expectation. In this court, the plaintiff is also the judge and jury—and anything said is accepted by the gallery of observers. However, these observers do not just observe. They also take part in the court’s proceedings. They play judge and jury as and when they feel like. Since they are their own judge, there is no one to bring the court to order when things get out of hand.
Unfortunately, many businesses have not seen the seriousness of the OCCD. Many organisations do not seem to know that we live in a day and age when the online world is as real as the physical world. Day by day, more and more customers are spending more of their waking hours online. These facts seem lost on some businesses. Therefore they do not even bother to appear when court is in session and their cases are being heard. This gives the plaintiff, i.e. the aggrieved customer, a field day. He or she can tell an outright lie and the defendant, i.e. business in question, will not be able to say anything about it. This is why smart businesses ensure that they are always present in the OCCD. Even if the best the business can hope for is just to be there to defend itself.
In defending themselves in the OCCD, businesses adopt many strategies. There are those who will come out with facts and figures to explain their position on a matter. There are those who will even direct customers to the organisation’s website, where there will be enough information to address the issue. There are those businesses that will send a message to the customer’s mail directly, urging the one to pull down whatever negative comments have been posted. There are those organisations that will go as far as threaten legal action.
By and large, there are standard responses that most organisations use in responding to a lot of negative reviews. These are responses that are mostly vetted by legal brains associated with the business and meant not to give aggrieved customers any opportunity to take the business on in the courts of law. Standard responses are also mostly generic in nature. In other words, the organisation will use the same response for almost all negative reviews.
Then there are those responses which are meant to be humorous. Yes, sometimes an organisation can choose to laugh at the matter. Yes. There are those times when an organisation decides to use humour to deflect the effects of a negative customer review. Firms are realising that, sometimes, an effective way to respond to and apologise for service failures is by adopting a humorous approach. At first glance, it might across as utter disrespect to try being funny when a customer is displeased about something. It would be unwise to laugh at an aggrieved customer in the face, so why do it online?
The thing about dealing with an aggrieved customer online is that you are not dealing with that customer alone. As stated in the opening paragraph, the business is also dealing with the observers who are there to read the exchanges between the business and the customer. These third-party observers are as important as the offended customer. Therefore a business might be taking a big risk if it uses an approach that can be interpreted as offensive by third parties. An offensive response to a negative could do more harm than good.
In spite of all this, latest research shows that for certain kinds of negative reviews, the use of a humorous response might be just what the doctor ordered. In a study titled, “How potential customers perceive companies’ reply to negative reviews” published in the January 2022 edition of the Service Industries Journal, researchers discussed two types of negative customer reviews. These were the vindictive and non-vindictive reviews.
As the name implies, vindictive reviews are those negative reviews that are meant to exact revenge for a bad experience. There are those times when customers take a service mishap so to heart that they feel the only way for restitution is to take out their frustration online in the worst way possible. Vindictive reviews are meant to cause maximum damage. And if the reviewer happens to be a competitor who wants to hurt the brand, then the gloves are off. The vindictive reviewer will not even mind resorting to outright lies just to paint the brand in unwanted colours.
There are however those reviews that are genuine. These are mostly by customers who just want the right thing to be done. They are not after a pound of flesh. Neither are they trying to score a point. They might have just had a bad experience and want something to be done about the situation. Non-vindictive reviews are actually gifts. These customer reviews provide great opportunities for the organisation to find out where it is going wrong and to do something about the situation.
According to the research study published in the Service Industries Journal, referred to earlier, standard responses were effective, regardless of whether the review was vindictive or non-vindictive. However, employing humour in the response was only effective when responding to non-vindictive reviews.
As much as I accept the findings of that study, I believe there is a case to be made for using humour to deflect outright lies that are disguised as negative customer reviews. For instance, there is a negative review I read about concerning a particular restaurant. The customer claimed he had ordered a waffle and had found a nail and hair in the food. That is a pretty serious allegation to make against an eatery. The only thing was that, the restaurant in question had not even started operations at the time of these damning allegations. Evidently, this is a customer with an ulterior motive. I believe for customers like that, using humour to make others see the evil behind the review is just right. This is exactly what that restaurant did.
Another customer went on Yelp to claim that he had eaten a bad lobster in a particular restaurant. It turns out that the restaurant in question did not even serve lobsters. There was another customer who said he had experienced bad customer service in a particular restaurant. The owners were genuinely worried about the review so they viewed the CCTV footage of the day in question. It came to light that the customer was actually lying. So evidently, there are people with wicked intentions, who for whatever reason will just go out and lie. For those kinds of people, it helps if you just use humour to douse their evil intentions.
The thing about reviews is that like leeches they stick around for a while. Every time someone searches for information about your product, service or brand, these reviews will pop up—both the positive and negative. Since the organisation can do very little about which of the two kinds of reviews customers will read, it just helps to have some sort of responses to all. Nothing should be taken for granted when it comes to negative reviews. Even one negative review should not be left to chance. It could mean the difference between a reader becoming a customer or the one deciding otherwise.
This is why it is of great importance that no business takes its reputation for granted. And as the world goes more and more “virtual” by the day, the online reputation of the business assumes a greater importance. In many instances, the online reviews are the first that the customer will see about the brand even before any purchasing decision is made.
The importance of online reviews is backed by some very impressive research results. For instance, studies show that in some cases, 90% of customers are reading online reviews before visiting a business. Another study stated that 88% of customers trust online reviews as much as they do personal recommendations. There is also a financial incentive for having good reviews online. This is because one study found that customers were willing to spend 31% more at businesses with positive online reviews.
Trying to please customers in the past was always a tough job. But now, with the online world we now find ourselves in, things have become a whole lot harder. Businesses now have to compete with not only those within their immediate catchment areas but even those from far-flung places. Customers are now basing their expectations on what other businesses in different places are doing.
On top of all of this, one angry customer can cause such a furore that will rock the very foundations of the business. One customer is all it takes to undo all the hard work of the organisation. Today’s business manager is under a lot of stress. This is why sometimes, just sometimes, it pays to laugh off some of the negative comments and reviews. As the research referred to earlier has indicated, when the review is not from a customer who means harm, then the best thing to do is to laugh it off.
Even for those with evil intentions, laugh off their lies, and then take them on legally too, if you must. Add some humour to your responses to customer reviews. It can defuse any potentially tensed situations. Besides, customers will know that there is a real human being behind the responses and not a robot trying to be funny.
