Influence of the Communication Channel on the Forms of Impoliteness in Company-Customer Interactions

The present study aims to examine verbal violence in companies’ answers sent in response to customers’ complaints through two different channels: online (on a public forum) vs. offline (by postal mail). We draw on a recent body of marketing literature pertaining to employees’ dysfunctional behaviors, as well as on conceptualizations of impoliteness, to analyze which role the communication method plays on the forms of impoliteness taken in those interactions.The online dataset of impolite answers was selected from 936 naturally occurring exchanges between complainants and 179 firms on a French public forum. Exchanges were coded and content analyzed, and answers selected based on the face-threatening-acts they contained. The offline dataset was collected through a field experiment carried out with a representative sample of 2325 firms in Belgium. Each firm received a fictitious complaint, and postal answers received were analyzed and selected the same way as the online dataset.Findings from a discourse analysis of impolite answers show that impoliteness takes different forms depending on the communication channel. Unlike predicted by theory, the most violent forms were found in the private postal correspondence. Frequent references to the channel used by the complainant indicate that postal mail enhances conflict and is a catalyst of violence, hence leading firms to return the complainant’s letter and to cover with scribbles. This allows us to add a non-verbal dimension to the current conceptualizations of impoliteness.