Complaining using Social Media: What and Why?

This post builds off the first in the series, Social Media and Customer Complaining: Introduction, if you haven't read that, a cursory glance would help put things into context.

This post focuses on the first research question of my dissertation – what situations do people use social media to complain in, and then off the back of this, why do they choose social media to do so?

The research method for the study was qualitative interviews. With a relatively small sample size of 20 people the results are far from generalizable, but what they can do is offer sneak peek into individual’s mind-sets when they complain. This post will address each half of the question before making final conclusions.

What situations do people use social media to complain in?

I chose to split the results that ensued from my interviews into minor, medium and major incidents which occurred prior to the complaint being made. An example of a minor incident being something such as a lack of a customer’s favourite salad in a supermarket, with major incidents being things such as a burst mater main outside of someone’s house. The study showed that people complained mainly in incidents of minor or medium importance, which would be logical as occurrences requiring immediate attention would more likely to be considered ‘major’ and would therefore be more likely to use traditional, instant forms of communication such as telephone. This was also backed up by my participants, who explicitly indicated this to be the case.

Another aspect of my analysis was the type of companies that people complain to. Across my study there was a wide range of companies complained to, showing this is an issue for everyone, but interestingly a particular favouring to travel and public transport companies – particularly in the case of delays. This leads me to my next question, why do people use social media to complain?

Why do they use social media to do so?

As noted above, people tend to use social media in times of minor or medium incident. To me, this suggested that time plays a significant impact on whether people complain or not using social media. I felt this result is one I could relate with on an anecdotal level – for example, when waiting for a bus that is half an hour late, I would whack my phone out and tweet to the bus operator ‘what the hell, the bus is late, and I’m freezing!’. This is partly to alleviate the boredom, and also because my phone is right there, meaning I can vent my frustration directly at those whom I believe is inflicting such a wrong on me i.e. the travel company.

This example shows three different aspects of social media complaining which my study found to be important – time, accessibility  (in terms of access to social media through phones), and the ability to vent.

Venting was one of the key reasons people use social media to complain. An individual’s Twitter feed is their own space to publish and record what they’re thinking and what is going on in their life. This is where the lines between social media complaining to a company, and just complaining in general become blurred. I found that in these cases a customer does not even necessarily expect or seek a response – despite this however, brand damage can still be done, this to me would mean that something still has to be done from a company perspective – this is addressed more in my blog focusing on research question three, to be published soon.

Another reason for using social media to complain is that a customer has become exasperated by traditional means of communicating with companies. I found that the public nature of complaining using social media, in combination with media stories highlighting the effectiveness of  social media in a number of success stories such as the ‘United breaks Guitars’ in reference to United Airways breaking a disgruntled passengers luggage, and only apologising once it was in the very public forum. In this case, my participants tended to expect a reply, and were only further angered when they didn’t, or, as is the fast paced world of today, did not receive a reply quickly.

Conclusion

It is possible to see that customers complain in a range of situations, to a wide array of companies, with a number of different motivations. Time and accessibility it is argued are key motivating factors. I would argue in a time where social media is becoming more and more a part of everyday life, this will only increase to be the case.

With an understanding of why and in some cases how people complain, next I will focus on the ‘what’ of social media complaining, specifically on ‘what are people’s expectations when they complain using social media’.

Thanks for reading!