Complaints: when to use empathy vs explanations

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📝 Intro

You’re running an online bakery selling artisanal cookies, and recently changed to a new fair trade chocolate chip supplier. 

The taste of the new chocolate is a bit different than the one you previously used. You think it makes the cookies taste even better, but you’re a bit worried how customers who were used to the previous flavor will react.

Right on cue, one of your regular customers posts a comment saying “Just bought my previously all-time favourite chocolate chip cookie, and the chocolate tastes horrible! Disgusting and repulsive! What’s going on, @BakeryACME??”

You’re trying to figure out the best way to respond to their complaint, worried it might impact what others think about your new chocolate. You’ve come up with two options to respond:

1. “I’m so sorry you weren’t happy with our latest batch of cookies. I know you look forward to the taste you love, and I understand how disappointing it is that you didn’t get that. We craft each batch with much love and I hope you’ll come by tomorrow to try a cookie on us!”

2. “I’m so sorry you weren’t happy with our latest batch. We’re trying a new supplier for our chocolate which is fair trade to make sure farmers are well taken care of. Please come by tomorrow and pick up a cookie on us to help you get used to our new flavors.”

An analysis of nearly half a million posts from 89 brands shows us why the 2nd option is the best answer for this complaint.

P.S.: People are up to 32% more likely to forgive a mistake when they receive an apology, compared to when they receive compensation.

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Use empathy for disappointed complaints; explanations for angry complaints

Topics: Social Media | Customer Experience
For: B2C
Research date: January 2019
Universities: KEDGE Business School, University of Melbourne, Babson College, University of St. Gallen

📈 Recommendation

When addressing online complaints, respond - ideally within an hour - with:

• Empathy and understanding for sad or disappointed complaints

• Explanations for angry complaints

If you’re having a public exchange with multiple responses (it’s better to avoid this, here is how), alternate between the two response styles. Be especially careful with complaints of prominent members of online communities (e.g. top poster in a customer group).

Complaints will be less likely to go viral.

🎓 Findings

• To reduce the reach and virality of public complaints on social media, empathy works best for posts focused on sadness at the experience, while explanations work best for angry posts. 

• As part of an analysis of more than 470,000 negative Facebook posts across 89 online brand communities of S&P 500 firms, researchers found that:

  • Responding with explanations for angry posts, or empathy for sad posts reduced the virality of complaints by up to 11%

  • In back and forth responses between the brand and customer, alternating responses styles increased the engagement on brand responses

• Up to 25% of the virality of negative posts can be explained by:

  • How high-energy and angry the post is

  • How well established the complainant is within the group they posted in

  • Whether the writing style and tone aligns with the style of most posts on the community page

🧠 Why it works

• In situations where we’re primed to act, like when we’re feeling angry, an explanation of the situation can reframe the issue and calm us down.

• In contrast, when we’re feeling sad, we’re looking for understanding of our situation, not an explanation for it.

• If we see a sequence of similar messages (e.g. 3 responses explaining a bad service situation), we’re less likely to engage or pay attention to them. In contrast, if we see a mix of empathetic and explanatory messages, we’re likely to engage more as each message seems distinct.

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✋ Limitations

• This study focused on Facebook groups for large B2C companies that have online brand communities, implying a passionate, active group of customers. It’s unclear whether and how the effect may change for general complaints posted on a personal or company page, or for complaints about B2B products and services.

• It’s possible that the dynamics are different in other digital platforms or formats such as videos on TikTok or images on Instagram.

• The research focused on the virality of complaints, measured by likes and comments. It did not look at whether there was any actual impact on customer purchases as a result of viral complaints.

🏢 Companies using this

• An analysis of negative Facebook posts found that brands responded to 70% of posts (331,370 out of 472,995), with:

  • 61% suggesting a channel change (e.g. discuss directly with customer care)

  • 53% offering some form of an apology

  • 8% offering an explanation of the situation

  • 6% expressing empathy for the situation

  • 3% discussing compensation for the issue

• Brands are increasingly using dedicated customer support accounts to defuse situations and segregate complaints from their main social media pages.

• Some smaller brands who have stood out for the responsiveness of their team to online complaints, as well as their ability to show empathy or defuse tense situations include:

  • SaaS services Contextly and Buffer

  • Food ordering platform Seamless

  • Ticketing platform StubHub

• Through a mix of explanations and empathy, some larger brands have managed to make complaints viral in their favor, to showcase their great customer support.

  • Airline JetBlue’s social media pages, often hailed for quickly addressing minor grievances

  • Nike, known for localizing their social media engagement across the globe

  • Spotify, whose customer support channel won a Webby award in 2016

Coca-Cola responds to an unhappy customer complaint with an explanation to try and defuse tension with the poster.

⚡ Steps to implement

• Shortlist and monitor key online communities, forums, blogs and other pages that your customers frequently engage with to catch negative posts or those with product complaints.

• Try to respond to complaints online within an hour. 

  • For complaints that are likely to trigger emotions that people would act on, like anger or anxiety, explain the situation calmly to try and defuse the tension

  • For posts that are focused on sad emotions, like disappointment, use an empathetic tone to relate to the customer’s emotions

  • Based on the tone of your first response, alternate the tone of your message in subsequent responses (e.g. an empathetic response followed by an explanatory response)

• Other research on handling complaints shows that: 

  • You should limit your public response to one message, and then take the conversation private (e.g. Please DM us your details so we can help you)

  • Using humor (at the situation, not the person complaining) to respond to rude messages can make other people who see the complaint more likely to buy from you

  • Framing your response to say ‘Thank You’ instead of ‘Sorry’ (e.g. “thank you for your patience” instead of “sorry to keep you waiting”) can also improve customer satisfaction and word-of-mouth

🔍 Study type

Market observation (analysis of 472,995 negative customer Facebook posts across 89 online brand communities)

📖 Research

Detecting, Preventing, and Mitigating Online Firestorms in Brand Communities. Journal of Marketing (January 2019)

🏫 Researchers

• Dennis Herhausen. KEDGE Business School

• Stephan Ludwig. University of Melbourne

• Dhruv Grewal. Babson College

• Jochen Wulf. University of St. Gallen 

• Marcus Schoegel. University of St. Gallen 

Remember: This is a scientific discovery. In the future it will probably be better understood and could even be proven wrong (that’s how science works). It may also not be generalizable to your situation. If it’s a risky change, always test it on a small scale before rolling it out widely.

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