A measured amount of personalization and informality can help set a cooperative tone when handling customer complaints on social media.
Customer complaints are often distressing to businesses because they are a sign of customer dissatisfaction. But when the complaints are published on social media, it can be more unclear how to respond appropriately because the dissatisfaction is seen by more people. When attempting to resolve an issue on a public stage, acting promptly and politely is crucial. Equally important is the tone of your response. How should personalization and formality be balanced when a small mistake can create further complaints down the line?
THE RESEARCH
In the article “Testing the Various Guises of Conversational Human Voice: The Impact of Formality and Personalization on Customer Outcomes in Online Complaint Management,” Sophie Decock, Bernard De Clerck, Chloé Lybaert, and Koen Plevoets put out a survey to 225 university students to gauge students’ positive or negative perceptions regarding companies’ responses to complaints based on the post’s degree of formality and personalization. The researchers asked participants to read four complaints left by a fake customer on the Facebook page of a fake company. The complaints stayed the same while the company’s responses differed in formality (e.g., using or not using “Dear Sir/Madam” before the surname) and personalization (i.e., tailoring the apology to the complaint versus a scripted catchall response). The participants then filled out a questionnaire about how they personally perceived the response’s fairness, how satisfied the customer would be, and how personalized the tone of the response was.
Although the researchers discovered that formality led to perceptions of professionalism and higher customer satisfaction among respondents, the responses that were perceived most positively were the informal, personalized responses, scoring highly in terms of fairness and satisfaction. Importantly, impersonal responses resulted in lower perceptions of fairness and satisfaction, regardless of the formal or informal tone. The researchers thus concluded that “the results…clearly foreground the importance of individualized responses as the stronger effect.”
THE IMPLICATIONS
How does handling complaints factor into respectful online discourse? Equipping ourselves with an understanding of what language works best to assuage tensions and promote productive interactions is useful to anyone interacting online, whether as a representative for an organization or as an individual.
“The results…clearly foreground the importance of individualized responses as the stronger effect.”
Decock, De Clerck, Lybaert, and Plevoets (2021)
If your goal is to increase customer satisfaction, respond with informal, yet tailored, language, addressing the commentator colloquially with language you’d say in person. Respond in ways that make the recipient feel seen, like, “Hey John, I’m so sorry that happened to you!” When appropriate, these informal, personalized responses may help boost how satisfied customers are and how fair they perceive you to be.
If your goal is to increase perceptions of professionalism, and you don’t have the resources to individualize each response, try implementing a formal style, such as, “Dear John, we apologize for your experience. Please contact customer support so that we can work out a solution together.” When appropriate, these formal responses may increase how professional customers perceive you to be.
You don’t need to be afraid to respond to messages and comments that express complaints or disagreements. Just check your language to make sure it meets your goals.
To learn more about formality in complaint management, read the full article:
Decock, Sofie, Bernard De Clerck, Chloé Lybaert, and Koen Plevoets, “Testing the Various Guises of Conversational Human Voice: The Impact of Formality and Personalization on Customer Outcomes in Online Complaint Management.” Journal of Internet Commerce 20 (November 2021), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/15332861.2020.1848060.
-Emma Clark, Sydney Simpson, and Elizabeth Walker, Netiquette
FEATURE IMAGE BYRESUME GENIUS
Find more research
Read Priyanga Gunarathne, Huazia Rui, and Abraham Seidmann’s (2017) article to dive deeper into resolving complaints on social media: “Whose and What Social Media Complaints Have Happier Resolutions? Evidence from Twitter,” Journal of Management Information Systems 34, no. 2 (2017): 314–340. https://doi.org/10.1080/07421222.2017.1334465.
Check out Jackson Stokes et al. (2023) article to learn more about how formality can build trust and credibility: “How Language Formality in Security and Privacy Interfaces Impacts Intended Compliance,” CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (April 2023): 1–12. https://dl.acm.org/doi/full/10.1145/3544548.3581275.
Take a look at Sandra Jacobs and Christine Liebrecht’s (2023) article to understand more about the effects of conversational human voice in relation to company reputation: “Responding to Online Complaints in Webcare by Public Organizations: The Impact on Continuance Intention and Reputation,” Journal of Communication Management, Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCOM-11-2021-0132.
Handling Complaints: How Formal Should You Be?
A measured amount of personalization and informality can help set a cooperative tone when handling customer complaints on social media.
Customer complaints are often distressing to businesses because they are a sign of customer dissatisfaction. But when the complaints are published on social media, it can be more unclear how to respond appropriately because the dissatisfaction is seen by more people. When attempting to resolve an issue on a public stage, acting promptly and politely is crucial. Equally important is the tone of your response. How should personalization and formality be balanced when a small mistake can create further complaints down the line?
THE RESEARCH
In the article “Testing the Various Guises of Conversational Human Voice: The Impact of Formality and Personalization on Customer Outcomes in Online Complaint Management,” Sophie Decock, Bernard De Clerck, Chloé Lybaert, and Koen Plevoets put out a survey to 225 university students to gauge students’ positive or negative perceptions regarding companies’ responses to complaints based on the post’s degree of formality and personalization. The researchers asked participants to read four complaints left by a fake customer on the Facebook page of a fake company. The complaints stayed the same while the company’s responses differed in formality (e.g., using or not using “Dear Sir/Madam” before the surname) and personalization (i.e., tailoring the apology to the complaint versus a scripted catchall response). The participants then filled out a questionnaire about how they personally perceived the response’s fairness, how satisfied the customer would be, and how personalized the tone of the response was.
Although the researchers discovered that formality led to perceptions of professionalism and higher customer satisfaction among respondents, the responses that were perceived most positively were the informal, personalized responses, scoring highly in terms of fairness and satisfaction. Importantly, impersonal responses resulted in lower perceptions of fairness and satisfaction, regardless of the formal or informal tone. The researchers thus concluded that “the results…clearly foreground the importance of individualized responses as the stronger effect.”
THE IMPLICATIONS
How does handling complaints factor into respectful online discourse? Equipping ourselves with an understanding of what language works best to assuage tensions and promote productive interactions is useful to anyone interacting online, whether as a representative for an organization or as an individual.
If your goal is to increase customer satisfaction, respond with informal, yet tailored, language, addressing the commentator colloquially with language you’d say in person. Respond in ways that make the recipient feel seen, like, “Hey John, I’m so sorry that happened to you!” When appropriate, these informal, personalized responses may help boost how satisfied customers are and how fair they perceive you to be.
If your goal is to increase perceptions of professionalism, and you don’t have the resources to individualize each response, try implementing a formal style, such as, “Dear John, we apologize for your experience. Please contact customer support so that we can work out a solution together.” When appropriate, these formal responses may increase how professional customers perceive you to be.
You don’t need to be afraid to respond to messages and comments that express complaints or disagreements. Just check your language to make sure it meets your goals.
To learn more about formality in complaint management, read the full article:
Decock, Sofie, Bernard De Clerck, Chloé Lybaert, and Koen Plevoets, “Testing the Various Guises of Conversational Human Voice: The Impact of Formality and Personalization on Customer Outcomes in Online Complaint Management.” Journal of Internet Commerce 20 (November 2021), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/15332861.2020.1848060.
-Emma Clark, Sydney Simpson, and Elizabeth Walker, Netiquette
FEATURE IMAGE BY RESUME GENIUS
Find more research
Read Priyanga Gunarathne, Huazia Rui, and Abraham Seidmann’s (2017) article to dive deeper into resolving complaints on social media: “Whose and What Social Media Complaints Have Happier Resolutions? Evidence from Twitter,” Journal of Management Information Systems 34, no. 2 (2017): 314–340. https://doi.org/10.1080/07421222.2017.1334465.
Check out Jackson Stokes et al. (2023) article to learn more about how formality can build trust and credibility: “How Language Formality in Security and Privacy Interfaces Impacts Intended Compliance,” CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (April 2023): 1–12. https://dl.acm.org/doi/full/10.1145/3544548.3581275.
Take a look at Sandra Jacobs and Christine Liebrecht’s (2023) article to understand more about the effects of conversational human voice in relation to company reputation: “Responding to Online Complaints in Webcare by Public Organizations: The Impact on Continuance Intention and Reputation,” Journal of Communication Management, Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCOM-11-2021-0132.
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