Social Media Complaints

Social media are particularly relevant as a complaint channel because they have a high reach and allow for rapid escalation of complaint content. Accordingly, social media complaints have a strong impact on the attitudes and behavior of other customers, as well as on corporate image and brand value. With regard to complaint management, the abundance of different forms of social media can be differentiated on the basis of two aspects: (1) whether the dialog is controlled by the customer or the company; (2) whether the social media is occasionally or regularly used for complaints. Essential customer-controlled social media with occasional customer criticism include private Facebook and Twitter accounts, private blogs and private videos. Regular customer criticism takes place on evaluation portals, social media presences of watchdog organizations and complaint sites. Corporate brand Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as brand blogs, tend to have customer complaints occasionally, while customer care Facebook and Twitter accounts and customer care blogs regularly contain complaints. In a communication strategy perspective, two basic positions can be chosen: a passive monitoring strategy or an active dialog strategy. The choice between these two strategic approaches for social media must be consistently aligned with the respective complaint management strategy. Social media complaints place specific requirements on the task modules of the direct and indirect complaint management. In addition, the handling of social media complaints requires special human resource policy measures and the establishment of a specific organizational unit.