Strategically Communicating

Social media has provided customers with the means to instantaneously share their complaints not only with companies, but with other customers/potential customers.  The level of transparency that companies demonstrate when dealing with online complaints varies. So, I imagine, does customer response.

I once posted a complaint on Starbuck’s Facebook page.  A company reps commented on my post within an hour, asking me to call them.  While I was on the phone with her, the customer service rep deleted my Facebook complaint and her response. She sent me coupons for free lattes, and retained my business.

Frame Central handled it differently.  I posted a complaint about the horrible customer service I had received at their Beaverton location.  A company rep asked me to contact them and gave me a $100 gift certificate. She then responded to my original Facebook post, explaining what she had done to make up for my unpleasant experience (the gift certificate), explained the company’s customer service policy and that steps would be taken to ensure the problem did not persist. Frame Central also retained my business.

Bach and Kim’s consumer complaint study substantiates that companies are using social media to better address customer complaints and to foster dialogue with those customers.  There are different ways to approach this.  Assuming issues are resolved to the customer’s satisfaction, is it best to delete the complaint/discussion so that other consumers don’t identify a problem?  Or is it better to leave the complaint with explanations and remedies?

Mike Plett and I are presenting this week about external audiences. These types of audiences are important for a variety of reasons because they can affect a company’s bottom line, reputation and longevity among other areas. But external audiences are more than just customers who purchase products or use services. There is a wide variety of external audiences of which organizations must be aware.

We’re going to look at what external audiences are, how persuasion theory and resource dependence theory factor in, along with how narratives can be useful for organizations. We’ll also discuss the two readings that were assigned to show how external audiences affect organizations.

Here are three questions to think about for Monday’s class:

• What value is there in defining and segmenting stakeholders into categories such as internal and external?
• How can we apply the dimensions of perceived realism to craft more effective narratives?
• What are the benefits of a proactive approach to external audiences versus a reactive (defensive) approach with external audiences?

Listed among the results of the “Perceived Realism” article is the finding that “narrative persuasion occurred regardless of whether the narrative was viewed as fiction or fact” (Cho et al., p. 18).  On the one hand, this conclusion seems somewhat obvious, since persuasion often involves an appeal to an audience’s emotions.  As the authors observe, Forrest Gump is not “plausible, typical, or factual,” (Cho et al., p. 9), but viewers still responded to it.  One would assume, however, that as audiences move from overt fictions such as film to fact-based fictions like public service announcements (PSAs) the importance they attach to the realism of those narratives would increase.  How factual that narrative is would then determine, at least in part, how persuasive it was.

The fact that the results suggest the contrary raises the question: how generalizable is this conclusion?  The lone PSA described seemed sensationalist, and since the beer ad involved time travel I think we can safely characterize it as fictional.  Would a study featuring testimonials or endorsements net the same results?