Augmented Customer Strategy

10Engaging Reciprocity from the Complainant Customer in the Digital Age

Events leading to customer dissatisfaction can be extremely detrimental to brands because they weaken customer relations. Since the end of the 1990s, complaint handling has become an essential tool for restoring a deteriorated customer relationship resulting from a lower quality of the product due to company problems. Nevertheless, in a connected and globalized world, customer complaint management is at the heart of the new challenges facing brands. Thus, by offering complainant customers new spaces to express themselves, Internet ecosystems tend to divert them from holding direct dialogue with brands, with the risk of a deterioration in their e-reputation. Obtaining the voice of the complainant customer to initiate a repair process with them becomes a more complex challenge. In addition, companies are aware that in complaint handling, achieving a high level of customer satisfaction is no longer sufficient to guarantee repurchase behavior. Initiating reciprocal behavior from the complainant customer following the handling of their problem becomes a new challenge in relationship marketing. Finally, faced with the fragmentation of the field of complaints associated with the increasing diversity of the modes of expression available and motivations of complainant customers, consumer services can be more efficient by better differentiating their response to the problem.

10.1. Obtaining the complainant customer’s ...