As a volcano wreaked havoc on the global economy, train operators, car rental companies, and hotel chains came under fire from customers for raising prices during the chaos. The incendiary complaints, which made headline news, highlight the rise of consumer power, and the ability to use social media to whip up the ire of fellow conspirators and make companies answerable. The message is clear: a lone swordsman on the customer complaint battlefield is not to be ignored, and can enlist an army of comrades at moment’s notice.

Levelling the playing field    

When five Eurostar trains broke down at the end of last year, customer responses took a surprising new form. Large numbers of people began posting complaints on social media sites, some even tweeting while still stuck on trains. “No Eurostar services on a Sunday now. It’s still too cold for Thomas the fcukinguseless Electric Engine,” one passenger reportedly wrote. Eurostar must have watched, maybe a little bewildered, as news like this travelled rapidly across the internet and spiralled into a small storm of online protest.  

This is one sign of how the landscape of customer complaints is shifting. In the past, all disgruntled customers did was tell a few friends or write a letter to the company to complain. Now social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube mean they’re just a few clicks from sharing their complaint with the whole world. Chances are that others will comment and add their own complaints to the post. All of a sudden, the complaint can rapidly build into a mass movement against the company.

Analysts estimate that about four percent of all tweets on the micro-blogging site Twitter are complaints about or recommendations for different products, with the weight tipped to the former. Last June, thousands of people took to Twitter to protest telephone operator AT&T’s planned pricing policy for a new iPhone model. These spontaneous outbursts were quickly organised into a ‘twitition’ ¬– an online petition using the Twitter framework. The effort gathered so much speed that AT&T soon responded by amending its upgrade policy.
Twititions aren’t the only thing linking angry customers. Other Twitter pages like ‘pissedconsumer’ and ‘getsatisfaction’ also aim to make it easy for people to share their complaints and communicate these to the companies involved. Away from Twitter, sites like the UK’s www.grumbletext.co.uk are catching on to the trend.

Riding the wave

Companies are quickly having to re-fit their customer service departments to respond to this new terrain. After facing their own complaints crisis when a disgruntled customer posted a video to YouTube, the US company Comcast created ‘digital detectives’ that scan social media sites for comments about the company, responding directly to them before they ferment.

Other companies are also seeking to engage with online complaints. UPS has its own Twitter feeds, which allow it to respond in a personalised way to any complaints and comments that are posted on the site. This approach can help turn social media from a danger to businesses into a tool to quickly react to customer complaints, potentially resulting in even more satisfied and loyal customers. 

So next time you rattle off a complaint on Twitter or Facebook, don’t be surprised if the company you’re addressing is one of the first to respond. The blistering pace of online communication is not only helping disgruntled customers to reach the world, but helping businesses to reach out to them in return. And that’s something nobody can complain about.