I do about 50% of my shopping online, and this was easily one of the worst experiences I had. I hate the feeling of being ripped off and you probably do, too. Do yourself a favor and shop somewhere else. I wish I had.
Anonymous Consumer
Hate is a natural feeling, like love , and brand hate is as common as brand love in consumer markets, especially with the advent of empowering digital communication tools. Thus, either you like it or not, every brand has haters . Although many companies see haters as a big problem, actually ignoring them is the bigger problem. 1 Interestingly enough, the root cause of such brand hate is mostly miscommunication between consumers and companies, and most of these problems are predominantly created by companies’ mismanagement. A study revealed that 80% of companies think that they deliver superior customer services, while only 8% of consumers think that the same companies deliver superior services. 2 It is clear that consumers’ expectations and focuses are different than those of companies, and that difference fuels the hate in markets. Sometimes it feels like as if consumers are from Venus but companies are from Mars.
Although brand hate has been ignored and neglected in the past, as most haters prefer to be silent and unheard, today, consumers’ voices have started to influence and redefine the relationship between consumers and companies as a result of the digital emancipation of consumer markets. We have discussed many issues regarding brand hate in previous chapters. But, there is still a need for constructive discussion on how to manage consumer brand hate and, in fact, how to transform that hate into love for the sake of peaceful consumer–company relationships. Although there is no golden rule for how to transform every single brand hater into a brand lover , companies should, at least, learn from these consumers how to manage hateful feelings so that we all can observe more constructive, fair, and healthy relationships and communications within the markets. I worry that if the consumers’ hate is not detected and understood in a timely manner and dealt with properly, the consumer markets might even fall into a self-destructive mode in our consumption world. That would be the end of digital markets and economy as we know it.
Metamorphosis of brand hater
In other words, you have already disappointed them twice, and now, they are standing on a strong base to believe that you deserve their vicious hate . Furthermore, it is easier to prevent complainers being brand haters as they have relatively lower level hate and mostly feel low or mild brand hate . The goal is to fix everything before consumers reach incontrollable brand hate levels.
Thus, no complainer turns into hater overnight. If they are treated unfairly during the complaining process or the process of searching for a solution fails, either through the help of company or not, they will really become haters who are seriously willing to take you down. The research revealed that only 14% of complainants had their problems resolved on the first contact. 3 In other words, 86% of your complainants are ready to morph into be your hater . Furthermore, complainant satisfaction continues to decrease to teens. 4 If you don’t do something about it, your unsatisfied complainant soon will be your hater. This is generally the failure of company’s consumer service department or hence the complaint response systems. If you don’t know how to handle your complainants’ problems, you are creating haters with your own customer service department. The importance of consumer service/relationship management is getting so paramount that some scholars even predict that marketing as a discipline will eventually have no option but should predominantly be converging into “consumer service/relationship management” concept in the future. Although this can be found as a very bold statement, some practitioners already claim that “customer service is the new marketing” (Baer 2016, p. 33).
Although scholars have provided very helpful strategies and techniques for how to deal with increasing consumer complaints in the past, there are no clear suggestions and strategies for how to handle brand hate such as this. Companies actually have two important opportunities to deal with complaining consumers before they turn into brand haters , as depicted in Fig. 7.1. If the company cannot handle initial complaints, then consumers will become real complainers and perhaps start talking with others about their experiences. If the company does not catch these first signs, the complaining consumers can eventually transform into brand haters.
From that point when the consumer has their first real feelings of brand hate , he or she tries to do everything to destroy the brand. In order to benefit from such opportunities and see the signals that are coming from consumers, companies must develop advance listening tools with the help of technology to detect hateful feelings and speeches before they are deployed into markets. Failing to satisfy consumer complaints means that you are accepting the animosity from the consumer. Listening tools should focus on both internal listening and initial consumer complaint processes as indicated at the first opportunity, as well as whole markets if consumers prefer to complain to masses as indicated with the second opportunity in Fig. 7.1. If you miss the second chance to fix the problems, perhaps you are accepting that you will have to deal with the most lethal sort of consumer. Clearly, such a brand hater is not created overnight. And, now he or she will recruit new followers who are ready to hate your brand even though they might have loved the brand if they had option. Thus, taking advantage of these two opportunities is very important and is highly dependent on a company’s ability to listen to markets and detect the hate early.
Brand hate management process
Listening
Many relationship problems start when you lose communication with the other side. You have a feeling that the other side is not even listening . Often, you may feel like you are talking to yourself or talking to a wall. Everything you say has no meaning and every word comes back to you without any resolution . In these situations, some people get very angry and start to fall into a deep hatred if the communication is not re-established and the problem is not resolved. You cannot help your consumers if you do not know what they need or with what they are struggling. Thus, the first step to find out who really talks about you and hates you, and understand why they do so is to listen to them. Many consumers who are struggling with a brand are in an emotional need to be heard and they talk. In today’s consumption places, it is now possible to listen to wider segments of markets to see who is talking negatively about you and your brands.
There are more people talking on the Internet than in physical environments today. They get very vocal about their bad experiences and dissatisfactions in remote corners of the Internet or in open public places. Thus, there are a lot of consumer-initiated conversations happening in the arenas of digital consumption, both in private and in public review spaces. In order to understand what your consumers are saying about you and your brand, it is necessary to develop technologically advanced listening systems. Companies can search for negative words and sentences appearing with their brand name to see if there is any negative talk is going on regarding their brands. Some companies are doing this listening from within their organizations, developing new units under IT (information technology) departments. Others hire specialist contractors or companies that have expertise in listening to the markets.
Although some companies do listening manually, simply putting negative words into search engines to detect negative and hateful conversation regarding their brands, today’s digital technology allows companies to listen with automated systems. Companies can now easily collect information regarding consumer dissatisfaction with advance intelligence systems. Consumer intelligence systems, such as speech tracking and text analysis tools, allow companies to get insights about consumer hate and common satisfaction problems. In addition to keyword searching, you can also use Geofeedia to find the geographic location of the negative speech. Companies definitely need some sort of tracking system in place in order to follow the evolution of consumers’ brand hate in real time. The earlier the hate is detected, the better the chance for companies to build a meaningful communication with consumers to eliminate all the negativity before it moves from cold hate to cool hate and hot hate . Analogically speaking, hateful speech is like cancer cells. If they spread to the whole body, the body eventually collapses. Technologically agile companies can quickly detect hate targeted to them and start a communication with the hateful consumer to stop the fire before it spreads throughout the market. Without technologically advanced market intelligence and listening systems in place, companies will be blind and deaf, and hence find themselves in the darkness with their haters . Furthermore, such listening efforts can help you see that if the hate is actually coming from a real person or from a troll or from a review-farm or from a competitor-associated source such as a paid-blogger . Authentication of the negative voice in early stages of listening process will eventually help you to determine either you need to help a disgruntled consumer or deal with some sort of illegal information dissemination effort targeting your brand.
On the other hand, some consumers will come to the company with a complaint and ask for help. If the company does not handle such complaints and fix the problems in real time, consumers leave the company behind, and, in fact, their anger might eventually turn into deeply burning hate . Thus, companies need to develop strong relationships with consumers. Every company needs to use good quality “consumer relationship management ” (CRM) systems. You need to upgrade your CRM systems regularly to maintain depth in your relationship with consumers. CRM will help you to develop understanding and a strong communication culture with your consumers. Consumer service personnel should be trained to truly understand the results of their misbehavior during communication with returning consumers. Companies that struggle with hateful consumer remarks and behaviors need to develop a consumer-centric business culture to eliminate all sorts of mishandling and miscommunication with regard to consumers. You need to analyze each returning consumer in detail. Why are they complaining? How do they bring their complaint to you? What types of communication style do they like? What kinds of additional tools and solutions do you need to fix potential problems? How can you help consumers in a quick and diligent way? How can you make consumer experience with the company smoother and easier? You cannot answer these questions if you do not know your consumers. Thus, having analytically strong and state-of-the-art CRM systems will help you to understand the changes in consumers’ emotional needs!
Many companies act quickly and integrate new technologies into their systems. Companies need to be one step ahead of consumers. They need to talk with consumers all the time, even though there may be no complaint and when there are signs of positive consumer experiences. You need to eliminate any communication barriers between your consumer and your brand. In the past, marketing listening was like listening to your friends and peers, but in today’s digital age, you need to listen and understand your consumers like you listen to your kids. This kind of listening will open the door to a better relationship and socialization with your consumers, engaging with them and figuring out the root causes of any problems.
Although listening can be very helpful for a company, it should not be invasive. Consumer privacy should be always a top priority and understood well by the company. Some consumer haters might carry out very violent and criminal actions targeting the company and the brand, as described with the anarchist haters; the company might need to start legal action against such haters. Thus, there is always a legal side to listening to consumers. In general, technology used to listen for consumer haters will eventually help companies to build positive social relationships with consumers in a legal and moral way (indicated with dark arrows in Fig. 7.2), which will eventually open the door to peaceful market communications and relationships.
Engagement
Listening is only the first step in engaging your consumers and understanding what is bothering them. Starting an engaging conversation with disappointed consumers will help you to understand the potential antecedents and reasons for the hate the consumer feels about you and your brand. So, engagement means not only listening to your consumers but also talking with them so as to understand their problem and to figure out the reasons for their dissatisfaction , anger , and hate . The first rule of engagement is to be sincere and to be willing to understand and solve the consumer problem. But, how to engage to the consumer who’s been burning with negative feelings about you and your brand is very difficult duty. It is clear that reactive engagement with these kinds of consumers will have limited and short-lived effects, while proactive and considerate engagement will have stronger and perhaps long-term positive effects on the consumer. Thus, it is very important to determine the right code of engagement tone through right communication channels at a timely fashion on the base on the level of consumer brand hate . In other words, such an engagement process can be discussed in threefold: “tone of engagement ”, “channel of engagement ”, and “timing of engagement ”. In short, the question is “in which capacity”, “through which channel” and “when” should a company engage into its potential and actual haters .
Tone of Engagement
Listening is a one-sided function, but engagement is a social process and it happens between two or more sides. Every hater needs to be heard and expects some sort of response. But, the question is how to introduce the most appropriate, comforting, and helpful response to consumer before the hate progresses and reaches uncontrollable levels. Some consumers are perhaps searching for answers regarding their perception of unfairness and truth, while some others are already passed those levels; thus, they further are looking for revenge . Thus, the tone of engagement with consumers can vary depending on consumer’s level of brand hate , and this, in turn, determines the nature of the engagement process and the future of the relationship with the consumer.
I will discuss the engagement process in four major elements. First, you always need to show some empathy to complainant and potential hater in early stages. Most of the haters complaint that nobody really tries to listen to and understand them. Thus, every hater cries for dialectic communication and empathy. Furthermore, even a reasonable person can sometimes fall into their anger and hate , and can’t realize how hurtful and unreasonable they become. You might consider mirroring their hate to them to waken the good inside them. If there is more bad than good inside them, you might want to drop them, especially the ones who are compulsive complainers and constant problem creators without a reason. One way to do is to verify the authenticity of information used in haters ’ rhetoric to make sure that such feelings are genuine and not coming from your competitors or any other third party.
Dialectic Empathy
The engagement process is not like a high school debate where you try to prove to your consumers that you are right, and they are wrong. No matter if the consumer is in mild , moderate, or severe brand hate level, engagement communication should not be authoritative and demanding. Your engagement effort should be carried out in a mutually respectful manner. Do not blame your consumers. Try to understand what is really the problem is. They have every right to think the way they want to think. You need to focus on consumer’s own bad experience and try to understand the consumer’s point of difference from your brand meanings and business policies. Using catch phrases that lack understanding will not be received well by the hater . They are not your ordinary consumers and they won’t be settled with simple phrases such as “sorry, that’s our policy”. Majority of the complainants expect the company to listen to them sincerely and show some effort to understand the problem and be treated with dignity. 5 Complainant and/or potential hater wants the company to see the problem in his/her shoes, and company should show some empathy to really learn from the consumer. Most importantly, where they see unfairness with the brand during their relationships, 58% of the consumers say that they just want to express their anger and tell their side of the story to the company. 6 Thus, don’t forget the fact that they are angry with you and you can’t fix the anger with anger. Furthermore, showing empathy doesn’t mean that your consumer is right. There will be times that you might think that your consumers perhaps wrong about their outcry, complaints , and hateful feelings. But, if you don’t show empathy and try to understand their problems, either caused by the consumers or you, you will end up losing the communication control which will plant the seeds of progressing brand hate in the future.
Hate Mirroring
When the conversation progresses with your hater , you might consider engaging them through mirroring their behaviors so that they can also see where they are in terms of hateful feelings.
Your hater, in this way, might come to a realization and/or some level of wakening and awareness regarding their negative feelings . Mirroring shouldn’t focus on how to embarrass your consumer, but should focus on how to make them realize that they are leaving the norm. They could be totally right or justify their anger , but you can’t learn more about the root causes of their hate if you at some point can’t lower the heat. For example, recently, the actor Shia LaBeouf got really tired of the negativity and hate that is targeted at him on social media and invited all of the hateful or angry people to meet with him and talk about such negativity. In a café, he put a paper bag on his head on which was written “I am not famous anymore”. He wanted to talk with these people in a one-on-one situation and he printed out all the malicious and hateful tweets and put them into a bowl. He asked some people to just come and read the comments while he sat there with a very broken and apologetic manner. Although he expected that some people would come there and be very mean to him because of what he had been reading about himself, he was surprised to see that everything changed when people got into the café. He said people stopped looking at him as an object but started to see him as a normal human being. He indicated that the whole thing turned into a very loving situation. His analysis is interesting, as he thinks the other people were also in the same situation as him and they had people who hated them. They wanted to make a mark and make online comments because they suffer the same thing, and they try to be noticed and singled out from others. This, in fact, indicates a lack of attention and love , according to Mr. LaBeouf. 7 This simple experiment also shows that once you have had a chance to find a way to engage in such haters ’ worlds, you might be able to find some human touch and loving relationship with the people. Thus, companies need to focus on how fairness is perceived in consumer–brand relationship during the engagement process, and should train their employees about the meaning and value of tolerance for their business accordingly. If employees reveal empathy and listen to consumers in an engagement process, this somewhat painful process opens new avenues to positive and likeable consumer–brand relationship.
Alternatively, you can also reflect some positive relationship examples with your favorite and loyal consumers to your hater . Although the well-known cliché, “love is the medicine of hate ”, might not provide a solution all the time, this could be a persuasive approach for the haters who are at the early stages of brand hate hierarchy such as mild brand hate . Company can highlight the positive relationship with its loyal consumers with examples when it is dealing with its haters so that company can also develop a road map to positive relationship with its haters . This kind of positive reflection should be in a mentality and tone that tells your hater that “positive relationship is possible so why don’t we work on our relationship together” rather than creating sharp and jealousy stimulating mind-set such as “see we have nice consumers too, thus your hate doesn’t bother us”. The second one can, in fact, increase the hate more than it is necessary when it is not to handle well as it is based on jealousy rather than positive reflection.
Authenticity Verification
There is always a danger that some of the hateful messages are circulating in the markets perhaps disseminated by trolls, review-farms, or from paid-blogger who works for your competitors or your adversaries. If you can’t determine the source of the negativity targeting your brand, that could mean that there is someone out there and seeding hate targeting you. At this time, we don’t know how much of the targeted hate generated in today’s markets is genuine and coming from original sources or from machines or another company or paid consumers. The 2016 Presidential Election in the USA is the best example of this. It is believed that one foreign adversary of the USA purposely disseminated negative and false information regarding the candidate they think that can be more hurtful to their national agenda. Most of the hate speech and hate semiotics are developed in digital format and deployed in the Facebook and other social media to target specific demographics who are undecided as well as who are also more receptive to this kind of hateful rhetoric to influence their choice. Although it is, at least at this point, not clear how much of this kind of hate -farming affected the election, it is, however, clear that such targeted hate can easily get raised exponentially and artificially to raise to uncontrollable levels.
For example, companies that are in aggressive competition can use anti-branding activities against each other directly and indirectly because negative consumer voices can spread to whole markets in a heartbeat. Unsurprisingly, companies can secretly support the anti-branders of a rival, potentially receiving economic benefits from the possible damage to their rivals. From a legal point of view, this can be treated as economic sabotage. Legally, consumers who receive cash or in-kind payment to review and talk about products and brands must disclose such endorsements (FTC 16 CFR Part 255, “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsement and Testimonials in Advertising”). Thus, the FTC ’s recently revised guidelines are intended to eliminate the chance of bad faith and unethical usage of anti-branding activities in the markets. But, the companies’ close watch of unsubstantiated negative information is the only option to detect and deter these kinds of damaging competition in the digital markets. Thus, companies need to verify the authenticity and the source of each negative claim and information, and go after such artificially generated hate so that they can protect their reputation which is unfairly under attack. This also helps companies to focus on right issues rather than fake and unrelated complaints without wasting any more effort. In any scenario, the company can take legal actions against such bullying efforts targeting their brand.
As also discussed earlier, many anti-branding hate images are claimed to be believed by the companies that focus on brand dilution efforts; thus, they are the case of brand identity infringement. But, this is seen as an expression of social and political issues of disgruntled consumers, rather than an imitation or corruption of corporate brand meanings. Many corporations try to control the creation of brand meanings, but we are living in a sharing economy, and in today’s reality, it is essential that corporations share such meanings and understand the easily blurred line between intellectual property rights and free speech during their interactions with disgruntled and hateful consumers. Companies need to study these differences carefully. Otherwise, they are in jeopardy of being seen as a major source of aggression in the marketplace.
On the other hand, it is also possible that some anti-branding efforts might not reflect the actual truth about the company which is the target of negative criticism. It is possible that the information presented by some of the anti-branders could be intentionally or unintentionally biased and misleading. Companies should follow up on these communications and find out the ways in which anti-branding images are, or are not, true. This pursuit of truth and accuracy will eventually help digital markets to achieve a clean and ethical consumer voice and to be healthy communication platforms. Companies should also examine whether the anti-brander is using diluting behaviors for their profit or whether they are instead raising their voice in order to inform society. Companies also need to realize that even though they might create or initiate a brand, consumer attributes will give them valuable information, even when a response is negative. A constant struggle for companies is how to convert negative publicity into positive communication. Thus, a company should analyze the level and nature of the dilution (tarnishment or blurring) and examine the consumer creativity . A company should focus on developing strategies to benefit from anti-branders, just as they benefit from their brand fans.
Algorithm of brand hate management
Lunatic Discharging
While some problems are fixable, some others are not. When they are dealing with haters, companies need to prioritize the fixable problems with their consumers and clearly explain why they cannot fix the one that might play a role in consumer hate . Companies need to accept the fact that the most company-related hate antecedents are actually fixable in the eyes of consumers, and thus that could be the battle the company should focus on. Thus, there is a need to analyze the consumer personality traits in the early stages of consumer hate to determine how much of the problem caused by company and how much of them are coming from the consumer. As discussed in the brand hate antecedents chapter, consumer brand hate can also be generated by consumer personality -related factors. It is almost impossible to win with narcissistic consumers as they think that their hate is justified no matter what. Represent your facts in a professional and effective way, and hope that your narcissistic hater understands what is going on, but that won’t be the case in most of the time. Thus, if the company realizes that the hate is a result of consumer’s personality disorders , then the company might stop engaging with these consumers in a professional manner as that is most likely not the company’s fault but rather the consumer’s own personal problems as also illustrated in Fig. 7.3.
Similarly, Jay Baer, the author of the “Hug Your Hater ”, discusses this issue in his book with an interview with Matt Gentile, who is Century21’s global director of social media. Mr. Gentile discusses how they handle these kinds of consumers as follows:
If the conversation online takes a turn that is unacceptable and beyond pale, we’ll do research into person. We’ll try to find out a little bit about them and understand what they are saying on their Facebook pages and Twitter. Are we dealing with somebody who’s kind of a serial complainer ? Is it something where there’s not a lot of validity in terms of the complaint right out of the gate? If you can see what they’ve made complaints to fifty other brands in the past thirty days, well, that’s good indication that you are probably prioritize that person in a different manner. (Baer 2016, p. 50)
Thus, it is also clear that you cannot fix consumers’ personality problems; thus, you need to find a way to leave the conversation peacefully without letting down your audiences as some of your own and potential consumers are watching what is going on. In this context, dashed lines in Fig. 7.3 indicate the limited engagement effects. Limited engagement means less involvement with the consumer but a situation nonetheless of watching closely in case they or the consumer group/s create negative effects unfairly, so that the company can take legal and social action before such problems reach unexpected and undesired levels in the market. Or, alternatively, the company can drop the whole relationship with the consumer. Recently, Tesla canceled an unreasonably complaining and somewhat hateful consumer’s order, justifying its decision by saying that if our company is that terrible why do you keep buying stuff from us? 8 Even this example is a good case which shows that your haters perhaps need your attention and at some point your love during your relationship with them.
However, dropping a hateful consumer could be a case where the brand is in high demand, and there are fewer alternatives as the company is perceived as very innovative and pioneering entity in the market. But, it might not be the case for all other brands. Thus, the company should be very careful and realistic about how much of the hate is created by them and how much of it comes from consumers themselves, or perhaps from competitors. However, it is possible that calculation of the magnitude and reasons of brand hate can be misleading or biased by the company, as such hate can be generated by a company’s misperception of the problem. Either way, it is the company that should initiate the discussion and find a negotiation and resolution pattern to eliminate such hateful feelings.
Channel of Engagement
If you do not know how to engage through a right communication channel, everything you have said will eventually backfire. Thus, the choice of communication channel can eventually set the tone of your conversation as well. A research revealed that 75% of consumers use three or more communication channels to interact with companies regarding their complaints . 9 Thus, responding to consumers through every channel they use increases your chances to engage to their lives and problems they are dealing with. Although complainants actively use telephone as a primary channel to complain, consumer complaining in digital world as a form of posting negative reviews in public platforms is steadily increasing. 10
Every communication channel has different impact and role on consumers’ perception on company’s sincerity on the complained issue. For example, reaching out to an angry and hateful consumer with an email or telephone call right after service failure has different impacts on the consumer than talking with her/him on publicly in an online forum later in time. Following up a hateful consumer remark on Twitter with a telephone call right after a bad consumer experience will be perceived as a sincere and an honest effort, rather than sending an apology email or posting a comment in social media after a week. In general, email and telephone calls are private communication tools, and if you use these tools with your consumers upon a personal complaint through a public channel, you could be perceived as sincere and understanding. Communicating through these private channels, at least, indicates that you care and willing to work with the consumer (assuming that the company try to work with consumer together to fix the problem at the heart of the hate ). Responding to the same consumer’s complaint through public channels and social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, might not be seen as sincere as private channels. Although you can continue talking or discussing the complaint issue of disgruntled consumer and other consumers might think that you perhaps are transparent and trustworthy, the hater who is the subject of this communication might find this kind of code of engagement not suiting. If you are wrong and you are communicating through social media, accept the responsibility through a public channel where the issue is raised, and perhaps communicate with the consumer through private channels as well to regain your hater . If you are engaging through public channels and if you found some evidence points out that the complaining consumer might have some repeating behaviors and extreme personality differences, you should never put such sensitive information out in public and embrace them publicly. Embarrassing a complaining consumer in a public channel is like throwing gas on fire even though consumer is wrong. Your audience will not like this, and you could be seen as mean and perhaps abusive. If you receive disgruntled consumers’ message through private channels, and you didn’t do your job and hope that the issue goes away and forgotten, you are making a mistake, because you will be surprised by the disgruntled consumer’s public notices and attacks in various online platforms, or at least their negative WOM . If your haters are unreasonable and disrespectful but you still keep your cool, the audience will see it and respect you and in fact your consumers’ loyalty could get stronger. Perhaps, they will see the viciously complaining consumer as an unreasonable and hateful consumer in your favor.
In other words, if the communication with complainer goes beyond the private channels such as personal email or telephone call to public communication tools such as social media, this is an indication that the complainer is about to morph into a potential hater. In other words, if the problems could be fixed within private communication channels, the consumer’s belief in and loyalty to brand could increase. However, if the needed help came perceivably short through private channels, then the person can easily morph into a hater and perhaps declares his/her hate publicly. In this situation, the hater is not only looking for answer and help regarding the problem but searching for revenge . In the mild brand hate levels, consumer is probably looking for answers and help, and hence, the communication stays in private channels; but this could not be enough for the consumers who are at the moderate and severe brand hate levels as they are more interested in revenge and public backlash targeting the brand. They would probably organize boycotts and develop anti-branding Web sites to attract more like-minded consumers. You could analyze these haters’ Web sites and posts in their social media pages and perhaps try to develop communication through private channels. Or, alternatively, you can develop your own Web sites to defend your views and reveal your version of justifications perhaps with a socially conscious approach to influence the negative public view tried to be established by these haters. Not every issue is related to service failures , but social issues as discussed in corporate social irresponsibility antecedents. Carefully handling these issues with your hater on your domain requires extra work. If you show sincere, factual, and trustworthy efforts to respond to such hateful remarks, you can even get a chance to broaden your base of consumers. A professional public relation’s understanding and effort will be the key for success.
Timing of Engagement
Timing of engagement with disgruntled consumers is very important as 60% of customers feel waiting to get help during service recovery creates the greatest harm. 11 Similarly, 40% of consumers expect the problem to be resolved quickly and 30% of them also want to see the resolution in a single interaction. 12 Furthermore, although about 40% of consumers expect a response in an hour in social media, average company response time is around five hours. 13 Wade Lombard emphasizes their response time during an interview with Joy Baer as follows: “If we’re talking about negative stuff, we do have a set response time, and that’s immediately” (Baer 2016, p. 138). In other words, the later the response gets, the bigger the consumer hate grows, and it gets costlier for company to recover from an unsatisfactory consumer–brand relationship. Each product and complaint has different time of tolerance in a service failure or in any type of consumer inquiries. In some industries, an immediate help and response can be seen as the standard; in some other industries, a couple of days of delay can be even seen as normal. Although many consumers understand that company needs time to get to the bottom of the problems, some consumers can easily get angry and in fact feel betrayal if the help doesn’t come within their expected period. Thus, companies should set reasonable time standards to respond to consumers and resolve the problem before a complainer turns into a hater . One way to fix this problem could be surveying with consumers to determine limits of the time of tolerance or any kind of inquiries so that they can update their consumer relationship management tools accordingly.
Furthermore, recovery time can also influence disgruntled consumers compensation expectations. A research showed that consumers’ expectation first increases after a service failure but decreases in the long run. 14 Literally, time is money when you are dealing with disgruntled consumer’s problems before the complainer morphs into an explosive hater. Consumers’ time of tolerance can vary depending on the strength of the consumer–brand relationship. A research showed that first-time consumers have shorter time of tolerance and expect higher compensations while relational consumers (such as regular or loyal consumers) tolerate longer waiting time after a service failure . 15 The same research found that if the company passes the relational consumers’ grace period, anger and frustrations can be very severe as these consumers feel betrayal. In short, the first-time consumers need a quick fix while regulars can tolerate delays better as long as it does not exceed their grace period.
However, there are also consumers and, in fact, investors who are watching how your company/brand is handling potential consumer–brand relationship problems in markets. A recent United Airlines scandal is a good example of how consumer brand hate can spread the markets like a brush fire. On April 9, 2017, United Airlines (UA) forcefully removed David Dao, a pulmonologist, from Flight 3411 because the airlines overbooked his seat. Dr. Dao has nothing to do with this problem, yet the airlines used very extreme measures and forcefully dragged him out from the flight. Other passengers who witness this unacceptable treatment recorded the whole event with their phones. The next day, the story was everywhere in the social media and in major cable news as everybody expressing their unbelief and hate toward UA. Dr. Dao’s voice and screams literally haunted me all day long since there was no escape from this scene as I saw the video over and over again everywhere I turned my head. My shock was transformed anger when I actually realized that I could be the one who is dragged forcefully from my seat even though I paid my ticket and did nothing wrong. To make things worse, the reason behind this violent act was to open a space for one of the UA’s own employees. This is an astonishing example that shows how things can get out of control in a short period and consumer brand hate and outrage can reach surprising levels.
The video even created an outrage and furor in international markets specifically in China where most of the international flights directed to by UA. Millions of people all around the world watched this video over and over again, and every time people hear the voice of this unlucky passenger’s scream, the stock prices of UA is dipped further. UA’s stocks nosedived and it is claimed that UA lost $1.4 billion worth of stock value in a day or so. 16 Things happen in a very fast way that UA totally lost control of its own brand message. Every time people hear this passenger’s helplessness either on TV or in a social media video, a new boycott and protest site is opened, and millions watched this horrific event by the end of the day. Every time people saw this passenger’s bloody face on the screen, UA lost another loyal passenger of own. The CEO’s apologies and promises were late compared to how fast consumer negativity disseminated into the markets. A few days later, UA offered $500 travel vouchers to passengers of the flight but that didn’t ease the fire, as this is perceived very insincere. This transactional approach is seen as denial of the seriousness of the problem and is perceived as a cold-hearted business approach. In a few weeks, United CEO finally publicly promised major policy changes. Airport and enforcement authorities also promised to investigate their policies and overhaul their procedures to create better and fair consumer experiences for all. But, these are all $1.4 billion late.
Thus, if a company/brand engages with its current and potential future consumers in a right tone and develops a positive and understanding communication through right channels at the right time, then the company/brand is in a better position to find a way to control and/or to stop spreading the hate speech to the whole market, and can also start discussing potential solutions or negotiation with consumers on how to fix the problems before turning into hateful feelings. This issue will be discussed in the following negotiation stage.
Negotiation
Economics of hate is at the heart of negotiation with consumers. This also has legal aspects, as some compensations are mandated by law (as also indicated by the “economic” box and arrows in Fig. 7.2).
Today’s economic systems are defined as a “sharing economy”. Consumers share their experiences, emotions, feelings, ideas, and their creation of meaning systems on the Internet. This includes negative experiences and feelings about corporate brands, as discussed in this book. Furthermore, our economic systems are becoming more affected by increasingly expressive and negative consumer emotions, and hence, I want to define this new economic influencer as “emotional economy”. But, the question remains: What is the economic value of these negative experiences and consumer hate in today’s economic structure? I think the answer to this question is that the economic value of these consumer creations is equal to the amount of brand equity they take away from the brand they hate . As indicated in negative double jeopardy research, brand value erosion created by anti-branders through impacting an original brand’s reputation and image might have some economic impact on the targeted brands. 17 This emotional brand erosion sometimes can have a greater damage to the brand’s intangible assets rather than brand’s book value or the company’s tangible assets.
In other words, if companies do not understand the impact of hateful feelings on the brand and company, they can’t develop the right coping strategies to recover from this hate . All of the approaches discussed in the above engagement processes require investment into the development of functioning compensation systems. Otherwise, company might pay the big price as loss of brand value . Companies need to save money and develop compensation systems to fix the potential hate problems as outcomes of engagement efforts. It is wise to use such systems to negotiate recovery efforts with consumers. If consumers had a bad experience and did not receive some sorts of compensation for their emotional and physical loss, and if they were not left alone, eventually you will be dealing with loss of brand value through negative WOM and potentially loss of sales value. In today’s technological advancement, now even a single consumer has capacity to influence vast numbers of existing and potential consumer negatively, which, in turn, leads to brand value erosion. 18 Thus, the company that cannot or is not willing to fix these problems through negotiating the right economic value is putting itself in a vulnerable position, as such brand hate eventually will find some audience in the digital consumption places. It is in company’s hands to accept your mistakes and compensate a consumer’s loss for the sake of higher brand value . Research revealed that 63% of complainants feel that they got nothing, not even an apology . 19 This means, most of your complainants simmering their hate and perhaps they are ready to burst. Similarly, a recent study also indicated that a positively or neutrally started consumer–brand relationship can dip into negativity and hate as a result of consumer’s bad experience, and can come back to loving relationship level if company can be able to compensate the perceived value of what is lost in the transaction. 20
Brand hate negotiation
I will discuss these issues in detail in the following sections as follows.
Non-Monetary Compensations
Apology
A private apology with an email or phone call to a complainant will show that you care about them; 75% of complainants expected an apology from the company, but very small portion of them gets the apology. 21 If your apology follows a fixation of the problem, it means that you just save your consumer falling from a cliff to ocean of hate . Openness and a sincere apology can be helpful with your hater , if you are wrong. Sincere apology lowers the tensions and helps you get into a manageable base communication with your hater in any level of brand hate . The first goal is to reach a reasonable communication and get rid of the issues preventing you to communicate with your consumer. An apology is a great tool in the short term. It is the first bucket of water you throw into fire. You can buy a time with your apology until you really figure out what’s going on with your complainant and hater in the mild or early stages of brand hate . An apology can also be used as the first step to lift to situation into better negotiation mood with your hater. A simple apology could be enough especially in mild brand hate levels. But, if the problem is unaddressed or poorly handled with simple apology, it is highly possible that consumers can quickly reach the medium and severe brand hate levels by time and not accept any types of negotiation and settlement attempts coming from you. If the hate is very deep and strong, you might need to develop some negotiation plan in addition to your initial apologetic engagement . In this case, it is highly possible that your apology might not have expected the impact on these kinds of consumers (who are generally in the medium and severe brand hate levels). You might need to use more facts and get slightly into adversarial communication with them, once you build a reasonable communication with your initial apology . These kinds of consumers have more complex and puzzling hate structure as already discussed in previous chapters. And, they won’t be settled with a simple apology and expect more.
You might also think that “all consumers complaint some point, so who cares?” Or, you might think that “showing regret publicly could give too much from your pride”. However, the research showed that a sincere apology can increase consumers’ satisfaction. 22 Also, you need to remind yourself that everybody is watching you and how you are handling a simple complaint in the digital world will eventually affect even your followers’ decision in the future. If you can’t even handle a simple apology to a returning consumer, others might think that you are not showing an empathy and they would prefer to engage in other available options instead of complaining to you. Thus, you do not hesitate to apologize to your consumer if it’s necessary. That’s a plus on your part, not a weakness. Furthermore, if you apologize both publicly and privately to your complainant, this generates positive WOM 23 and greater synergy effects on reaching positive relationship with your complainant as well as stronger relationship with your followers. However, if the problem is scandalous in nature and affects most of the consumers in the market, you need public apology , and that sometimes could lead to unfavorable reactions of your investors as your public apology would potentially lead lawsuits. 24 If an apology is not delivered in a right way at the right time, thus if it is perceived as cold, distance, and missing sincerity, that would create more public outrage and anger . 25 In other words, if it is not managed well, apology can do bad rather than good to you. In fact, it might create more potential haters than you needed to. In other words, your bucket of water turns into a bucket of gas that inflates the fire of hate more than needed.
Policy and Process Improvement
An assurance that the problem, which is the subject of complainant’s outcry, is not going to happen again would help you to regain your consumer on your side; 80% of consumers expect that their product repaired/service fixed, and 81% of complainants asked an assurance from the company that the problem would not be repeated. 26 These are big percentages, and it also indicates that consumers are saying to company that “I like you and I expect you to fix my problems, and furthermore I don’t want you to repeat the same mistake. If you do, you will make us mad and deserve our hate ”. You need to take this very important consumer feedback to improve your processes, products/services, and policies. This is actually a gift given by consumers to you to fix your problems, and it shouldn’t be perceived as a negative criticism aiming at you and your business. 27 In fact, you need to use this valuable feedback to change what is not working and thank your consumers for their contribution. In fact, you can even covert a complaint into a help. Jay Baer empathized an interesting view with a recent interview with Erin Pepper, director of marketing and guest relations at Le Pain Quotidien (LPQ), about a complaining consumer as follows: “You know, sir, you are a discerning patron. You notice deficiencies in our business that, frankly, most customers never see. What we’d like to do with your permission, sir, is digitally load funds onto a PLQ gift card. And what we’d like you do is, anytime you’d like, please go different Le Pain Quotidian location near you. After your visit I would ask you to complete a short online survey, and send me an email detailing your observation about how we’re doing, because you see things other people don’t” (Baer 2016, p. 21). This tactic, perhaps, works fine with mild brand hate levels as these consumers might be willing to volunteer for you. But, the problem can be difficult to handle in medium and severe brand hate levels as these consumers are mostly coming after your major policies rather than simple procedural problems.
Thus, policy improvement speaks more to medium and severe haters as they want to see some major shift in companies’ policy. They are not interested in short-term tactics such as apology but rather permanent and long-term strategic shift from the company. In fact, my research revealed that some die-hard haters of a brand actually had worked in that company in the past and perhaps they know a lot of things about your business operations and philosophy than anybody else. These consumers, hence, develop very strong social responsibility agenda against you as they have high expertise in your policies and procedures, and hence know potential systematic loops better than anybody else outside your company. These consumers perhaps feel a boiling and burning hate levels and dedicated themselves to their hate of the brand. In some point, these consumers actually love their hate , and it is almost impossible to convert them into brand advocates; thus, you may need to monitor them closely to control the brand hate contamination and to make sure that they are not sponsored by your rivals. Closely study their claims and try to develop counter-argument to stop potential bullying and misinformation if you are right.
Most of the policy problems have some sorts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) implications. Thus, you need to get to the bottom of these major CSR problems as they can generate more severe and long-lasting hate in the markets. You can alternatively promote your other CSR initiatives you feel you proud of while re-evaluating your policy that caused this problem in first place. You really need to polish your CSR strategies for these kinds of consumers. All you can hope to do is to convert your relationship and communication with these consumers into a reasonable level.
Monetary Compensations
Majority of the consumers feel happy if their emotional and physical damages are compensated as a result of service failures or company’s socially irresponsible behaviors, although this is mostly the case in product/service failures as consumers suffer financially. The research showed that 57% of consumers expect money back, 44% of them want to receive a free product/service, and finally, 42% of them expect financial compensation for their lost time, inconvenience, or injury created by the company. 28 Although some companies think that the disgruntled consumers might be trying to defraud them with monetary compensation requests (e.g., free product/service, gift cards, etc.), these kinds of monetary rewards could be less expensive and effective than marketing campaigns not only regaining the trust of returning consumers but also providing better consumer acquisition opportunities. 29 Monetary compensation can work better for consumers on the mild and medium brand hate levels. Consumers who are in severe hate level are too ideologic and deeply believe in their cause that they won’t settle with monetary rewards. The research also showed that complainants’ satisfaction can be doubled if non-monetary and monetary compensations used together. 30 Thus, companies should follow this path and try to fix problems with disgruntled consumers with sincere apology following with some sort of monetary compensation. That would increase your chance of preventing your consumers to morph into haters , but there are no guarantees that they will not continue their hateful path.
If we revisit the United Airlines case I have discussed in this chapter, we can see that United Airlines was not able to understand the severity of the situation quickly enough, or UA was not fast enough to use right negotiation techniques to solve the problem. Clearly, every product and service is different, and thus, response time to major product/service failures or major company wrongdoings can vary from one industry to another. But, it took a couple of weeks for United Airlines to realize how severe the problem is as they caught by surprise the overwhelming protests in the markets. It was clear from the beginning that the fix of the problem is not as simple as by offering dry apologies or granting flight vouchers to passengers, which were United Airline’s initial approach. But, the problem was too big to be fixed with only an apology or a couple of hundreds worth of travel vouchers, which can only be used in United Airlines . It’s ironic to see that such free vouchers offered to all passengers in the flight. This is perceived by consumer that United Airlines does not really care about the passenger they kicked out from the flight, but the other consumers who are viewing this tragic event. This was a shocking show put money or business above consumers or human being. Thus, the problem is bigger than United Airlines management thought at that time.
Analogically speaking, United Airlines tried to stop a major forest fire with a garden hose. They didn’t make timely major decisions and changes before the fire eats up the whole house. United Airlines fell short in understanding the problem and focusing on structural and procedural issues. This mistake led to extreme consumer anger and hate targeting United Airlines brand, which costs millions and some estimates billions of dollars to the company. One could claim that this was really an unexpected and an extremely difficult event that nobody could save United Airlines from this big scandal in real time. That’s true, but in a brand hate situation, especially if it’s happening in front of the public, the company always gets punches at the beginning and falls back. The success of the brand management is measured on how quickly the company senses the severity of the problem, engages with consumers with right tone, and fixes the problem with right negotiation techniques. Otherwise, brand hate can spill all around you in the digital markets.
Although consumers want you to compensate their loss and fix their problems, what they really ask is an understanding and a helpful touch. Perhaps that’s more important than simple compensation. Even though you failed to deliver the right compensation or solution for them, they might appreciate your effort if you make them feel that they are your priority, especially if the returning consumer is one of your loyal consumers. The most determined haters are perhaps the ones who were loyal or loved you sometimes in the past, either you didn’t hear them when they need you or some other reasons they got really upset with you. They wanted to talk with you and you didn’t listen to them and their love turns into everlasting hate . There are also the ones who hated you from the beginning. No matter what you do, you can’t earn their sympathy. It is funny, but I have heard many stories that when people first met with their best friends they did not like them at all or in fact felt dislike or even hate toward them initially. I had a similar experience, too. The truth is, if we hate somebody or something we hate something that is already inside us. I want to believe that it is possible to love someone no matter how much hate you feel toward them. I hope that companies can see this way too and be able to reach their consumers and transform their brand haters into brand lovers .
Notes
- 1.
Baer (2016).
- 2.
Tschohl (2013).
- 3.
Customer Rage Survey (2015).
- 4.
Customer Rage Survey (2015).
- 5.
Consumer Rage Survey (2015).
- 6.
Consumer Rage Survey (2015).
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
Baer (2016).
- 10.
Consumer Rage Survey (2015).
- 11.
Consumer Rage Study (2015).
- 12.
Parature (2014).
- 13.
Baer (2016).
- 14.
Hogreve et al. (2017, forthcoming).
- 15.
Hogreve et al. (2017, forthcoming).
- 16.
- 17.
Kucuk (2008).
- 18.
Kahr et al. (2016).
- 19.
Consumer Rage Survey (2015).
- 20.
Zarantonello et al. (2018)
- 21.
Consumer Rage Survey (2015).
- 22.
Gelbrich and Roschk (2011).
- 23.
Gelbrich and Roschk (2011).
- 24.
Robbennolt (2003).
- 25.
Zechmeister et al. (2004).
- 26.
Consumer Rage Survey (2015).
- 27.
Barlow and Moller (2008).
- 28.
Consumer Rage Survey (2015).
- 29.
Baer (2016).
- 30.
Consumer Rage Survey (2015).