…Dealing with angry customers on social media
There is another epidemic. An epidemic of Anger. People are angry. As a matter of fact, people are very angry and this epidemic is on the rise. Over the past couple of years, respectable publications such as the Harvard Gazette, Washington Post, New York Times and Forbes Magazine have all written about the rising anger around us. Although, these might have been written for an American audience, it is a fact that anger is on the rise globally. These days, it seems it takes very little to trigger people. Coupled with this is the fact that, as a society, we have jettisoned basic respect for each other, especially for the elderly, out of our collective psyche. This makes it fair game for anyone to lash out at just about anybody.
I do not want to believe that this pandemic of anger has anything to do with the deadly one that took lives a couple of years ago. I hope the rise of anger we are experiencing is not one of the aftershocks of that deadly plague. However, when one critically takes a look at what we have gone through over the past couple of years, it is quite easy to see why people are on edge. When things do not go according to people’s expectations, anger becomes the natural response.
If there is one place where things occasionally do not go according to plan, it has to be at the intersection between a business and its customers. Service failure is a part and parcel of life. What can go wrong sometimes does and it sometimes does spectacularly. When that occurs, customers do get angry. To add to this, when things go wrong and businesses attempt to do something about the situation, sometimes those service recovery attempts also fail. It is therefore not surprising that customers, human as they are, have also been caught in this wave of rising anger—and when customers get angry, they complain.
It is of a truth that today’s customer will complain online. It is something businesses have to live with. Customers will use whatever means they have at their disposal to voice out their frustrations. And one of the most powerful avenues they have at their disposal is social media. A 2021 study found that approximately 89% of customers prefer to communicate with businesses via social media platforms over other channels.
Today’s customers have no problem using their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn pages to launch a tirade. It has been argued that the anonymity provided by social media makes complaining a lot easier for many customers. A customer who is bent on expressing his or her dissatisfaction and anger can do so more from behind a keyboard and a monitor, than in a face-to-face interaction. People normally do not like to lose their temper in public. It can be quite embarrassing. However, from the comfort of one’s home, the one can let it all out.
What makes dealing with angry customers online even more challenging is that it mostly involves text-based exchanges. There is always a huge problem when transmitting emotions without the use of voice. Even more challenging is the fact that the customer-handling professional is deprived of the use of non-verbal cues in the exchange. Without seeing the look on the face of the angry customer and without the angry customer also seeing the sincerity in the eyes of the employee, the employee is left with very little to convince the customer. Text without the benefits of emotions can be easily misinterpreted.
Social media also allows a lag between the time the message is posted and the time a response comes in. It is therefore not as confrontational as a face-to-face encounter or an over-the-phone confrontation. With social media, even if the response are harsh, there is a time gap that reduces the attached emotions.
The third facet of going online is that it exposes whatever is placed on the platform to the general public. This means that whatever exchanges occur would have an audience. It is the perfect place to court public sympathy. Research has even shown that when businesses go toe-to-toe with an aggrieved customer, in a majority of the cases, the online public sided with the aggrieved customer.
It is however these very factors that make social media so attractive to customers as a means of expressing their misgivings. Customers can “hide” behind social media pages to speak their mind without suffering the embarrassment of the face-to-face encounter. If the customer is really mad at the brand and wants to exact as much punishment as possible in front of as many people as possible, then social media is just the right place.
This is why businesses must, especially in these times, find the best way to handle rising anger in their customers. Businesses must necessarily have in place the strategies and tactics to deal with disappointed and angry customers. To go into business without having a plan on how to handle dissatisfied customers would be akin to go out on the ocean without a life jacket or to fly on a plane without a parachute. Just as in these life-saving devices, you pray you do not have to use these service recovery plans. However, they are still very important to have close by. You never know.
When it comes to handling angry customers, it is important for businesses to understand that there are two factors at play—and both must be effectively managed, if the situation is to end well. The first factor is the service mishap itself. This could be a wrong order at a restaurant, a wrongly-debited bank account or a misplaced luggage. The job of the business in question is to solve the problem. The order must be corrected promptly. The wrong debit must be reversed immediately. The misplaced luggage must be found and safely returned to the customer hurriedly. Solving the problem however is just one part of the problem. This is what some scientists refer to as “recovery”.
There is however the negative emotions that arise as a result of the service mishap. That is the second factor at play. The process of lowering the negative emotions that come with the service mishap is what is referred to as “de-escalation”. Unfortunately, this is where many businesses fall short.
Many businesses fail to de-escalate these negative feelings of the customer. As a matter of fact, there are many customer service professionals who have absolutely no idea about these negative emotions. They believe if the service problem is handled, that should be enough for the customer. This mindset however leads to bigger problems for the business-customer relationship.
I have seen customer-facing professionals get frustrated or even angry because they do not understand why a customer is still not happy after a complaint had been handled. What these folks do not know is that if de-escalation does not precede or accompany recovery, the business’ job at winning over the angry customer would only be half done.
In the era of complaining on social media, the question that businesses have to grapple with is, how do we de-escalate on social media? An article published in an August 2022 online edition of the Journal of Marketing sought to provide the answer to this very question. According to the authors, business could use two main response strategies which were very effective in de-escalating the negative emotions associated with service failures. According to the article titled, “Complaint De-Escalation Strategies on Social Media,” active listening and empathy were vital to de-escalation when customers go ballistic on the Net.
Active listening is about truly paying attention to what the customer is saying. Since online complaints comes in the form of texts, it is important that the responses the company gives show the customer that the company is truly listening to the complaint. It has been stated that one way to do this is to use the same linguistic style adopted by the aggrieved customer. If the customer makes uses of certain phrases, the company should use the same when it is repeating and paraphrasing the customer’s complaints.
Empathy, as the word implies, is about walking in the customer’s shoes. On the Net, it has to do with the business using empathetic words in response to the customer. “I can imagine how difficult that must be for you” could be one way of showing empathy to customers. “That must be very difficult for you” is another way of going about showing empathy to the angry customers.
It is interesting to note that when customers employ these strategies, it does something more. Customers who were aggrieved tend to become grateful. The expression of gratitude from an otherwise angry customer is the icing on the cake. It has been noted that de-escalation has the potential of even placating aggrieved customers even without necessarily solving the problem that caused the arousal of negative emotions.
It will take a very brave soul to bet against the continuous importance of social media as a communications medium. It is true that anything can happen in the future. However, one can confidently say that, at least in the foreseeable future, social media will continue to play a major role in the lives of customers. If this holds, then it is important that businesses equip their customer-handling employees to actively listen and to be empathetic towards when things do not go according to plan.
