The Hindu Business Line : Viral de-marketing

In our family, while other kids learnt the art of reading, `riting and `rithmetic, we were given another grounding - in making customer complaints. Our father instilled in us a strong sense of what was due to us as customers, and that we should not shy away from voicing our discontent when less-than-satisfactory service was delivered.

Over the years, we've had a patchy response to our cribs. Usually, the company replied with a modicum of customer-friendliness, and mouthed the usual platitudes of an apology bundled with a "we'll do better next time" promises. Sometimes the response bordered on the churlish, as if the complaint letter, by pointing out shoddy product or service quality, had committed a gross breach of etiquette.

Often, there is pure apathy. I recall rejecting apple tarts, which seemed to have new life forms growing on them and blithely expecting at least a shame-faced apology - instead the restaurant owner shrugged it off as "these things happen." The worse response, of course, is pure indifference - I am still to hear from the classy Calcutta heritage hotel about the sad service I was subjected to; a multi-national pharma company has ignored my feedback about their badly packed ear-drops... and so on.

It's not so surprising, therefore, that most customers cannot be bothered to take the effort to make a formal complaint - "what's the point?", "no one is going to listen to us", or "it's not going to make a difference." In my admittedly activist and evangelist views, such a response does a disservice, not just to the extended family of customers, but in fact, to the companies themselves: I believe that honest feedback offers companies the opportunity to examine how their offerings are failing to deliver, and hopefully, fixing this.

In a previous article, I had explored the issue of the cost of service failure, and the concept of ambassadors of ill will: customers who many not sit down to pen (or e-mail) the complaint, but who could transmit their discontent through word-of-mouth, a viral de-marketing.

One statistic that is often quoted with regard to customer complaints is that a disgruntled customer talks to at least 22 other potential customers, influencing their buying decisions. In today's networked age of e-mails and blogs, this number is far too conservative - I don't know of any survey that has captured the speed with which urban legends and chain mails spread. The same network that can be used for viral marketing can be a machine for spreading customer discontent too.

Consider this incident, for example, which occurred a few months ago, when I was in New Zealand. A couple went shopping for their wedding, and decided not to go ahead with one prospective supplier. The upset supplier sent the couple a mail that said, among other things "Thanks for your reply. Your wedding sounded cheap, nasty and tacky anyway, so we only ever considered you time wasters. Our marquees are for upper class clients, which unfortunately you are not. Why don't you stay within your class level?"

The startled recipient of this vicious reply chose not to reply, but a simple click on the forward e-mail button set forth an avalanche of emails. Within a couple of days, the mail had reached the inbox of thousands of people all over Australasia. The fallout was predictable - prospective customers were aghast, bookings were cancelled, jobs were lost, but despite an apology, the damage was done. What's interesting is the original couple did not intend spreading the word in this manner - the wave of e-mails was beyond their control.

What can companies do to stem this? Once the virus has spread, it's not an easy task containing the damage. Yet, committed and customer-centric companies can, and do, make an effort to intervene. For example, I know of a business manager of a health-service who was forwarded an SMS that had been making the rounds of his patients, where one unhappy client had vented her spleen at her bad experience. Once he had recovered from the shock, he tracked her down, understood her problem and then worked to fix it — this positive step may not have erased the negative impact created (which itself could have been identified by better post-service feedback), yet it helped contain the future spread of ill-will from this client at least. Few managers are likely to adopt such a dedicated approach, yet it is the logical conclusion of a strategy devoted to customer intimacy.

It's an ironic twist, perhaps, that viral marketing - the marketing tool that so symbolises the virtual environment in which we all operate - can act as a double-edged instrument. If a customer complains to you, it's bad enough but if she complains to others, in this `forward with a click' age, it is disastrous.

That's why the organisational response to customer satisfaction has to move from the mere cosmetic to the prophylactic. How seriously a company responds to the voiced complaint, how seriously it internalises feedback: that's the cosmetic response to customer complaint. Going back a bit further, a company that seriously solicits customer feedback in the search for the disgruntled and the discontent demonstrates a proactive and preventive philosophy in identifying and solving the problem at its outset. If that sounds a bit paranoid and over-the-top, well, that's viral networking for you, with its ability to create a multiplier effect at cyberspeed.

(Radhika Chadha is a consultant in strategy and innovation. Karategy is the proprietary name of the strategic exercises conducted by Paradigm Management Knowhow Ltd.)

More Stories on : Customer Relationship Management | Internet | E-Mail | Karategy

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