Webcare Lectures
Lecture 1: Introduction to Webcare
Webcare: The act of engaging in online interactions with (Complaining) consumers, by actively
searching the web to address consumer feedback (e.g. questions, concerns, and complaints ~ Van
Noort & Willemsen, 2012
In practice we can go back to 2010. KLM first engaged in conversation with customer complaints.
Beneficial because they could help people but also good for reputation management.
First only 1 employee now over a 100 employees monitoring social media and engaging in webcare.
90% of (large) organisations engages in webcare
Goals of webcare:
Webcare for customer care
- KLM is present on (Almost) every dosical media channel
- Messages about luggage, flights, reservation, delays, rebooking etc.
- Aim to respond within 50 minutes, in 14 different alnguages, 24/7
Customer care:
- Signal customer problems and solve them
- Meet or exceed the expectations of customers
- Customer’s negative ewom to positive ewom, recommendations
Webcare for public relations
- Others are watching too
- eWOM can influence people’s impression of the organisation (e.g. trust)
- organisation’s webcare demonstrates customers’ comments are taken seriously
- prevent (N)eWOM → crisis
- reputation & relationship management
individual vs. collective
,webcare for marketing purposes
- creating a good image
- enhancing brand evaluations
- message could go viral
- could convince others to purchase
- valuable feedback to improve their businesses
o e.g. KLM improved lost and found services when they saw people complaining
- webcare → social media campaigns (repost positive responses on own social media)
Developments of webcare:
Amount of customer messages per week for KLM (in 2015) –
60,000
➔ reasons for customer service chatbots.
➔ Increasing adoption of automated responses in
webcare / customer care
Webcare: The act of engaging in online interactions with
(complaining) consumers, by actively searching the web to
address consumer feedback (e.g., questions, concerns, and
complaints)” (Van Noort & Willemsen, 2012, p. 133)
- Monitoring: search on SNS but there’s also a selection of monitoring tools like
hootsuite/coosto/ob4wan etc. for quick investigations to see who’s talking about you and what
is their influence and respond to it.
- Considering: When to respond
o Block: making it impossible to post on a company’s (social media) page
▪ Advantage:
• Good to filter hate messages or other violations / spam accounts
• When you don’t want people to be associated with your company
▪ Disadvantages:
• People will find other ways to use NeWOM e.g. third parties or other
channels
• Less approachable/accessible
o Sensor/delete: at a minimum, 48% (of the sampled corporations, n = 12) are likely to
delete negative comments
▪ Detect censorship:
• Customer references to previous comments that are not available
(anymore)
• Corporate pages only contain positive comments
• Organization publicly announces that negative (or obscene, etc)
comments will not be published
• Or that postings that are not directly related to main topic are not
permitted
• Or that customer postings are not allowed at all
▪ Advantages:
• Privacy issues: you don’t want people to share their private info
▪ Disadvantages
• Can enhance negative feelings that you want to share even more
- Responding: organisations should respond, various studies indicated that people are more
satisfied after receiving a response in reply to NeWOM – but you have to know the
complainant.
, o What’s the customer’s intent?
o What are the customer’s desires?
o What are the motives?
o What gratifications is the customer looking for?
- Measuring:
Complainants with different desires
Grégoire et al. (2015): good, bad, and ugly complaints
Difference between whether a customer asks for help, or tries to damage the organization
- Good: directness & boasting
- Bad: badmouthing & tattling
- Ugly: spite & feeding the vultures
, Van Noort & Willemsen (2012)*: effects of proactive versus reactive webcare
Reactive: customer asks for responds or an @ mention is used. (on the right) → more need for a
response
Proactive: venting frustrations rather than seeking an solution. (on the left)
Findings:
- Responding to NeWOM by means of webcare increases brand evaluations (better to respond
than not to respond)
- No main difference between reactive / proactive approach
- But, did found a distinction for platform types
o Reactive: no platform difference on brand evaluations nor perceptions of human voice
(so always respond)
o Proactive: only respond on positive brand evaluations on a brand-generated platform
(in contrast to a consumer-generated platform) – can feel intrusive
▪ Also, people perceived the brand as demonstrating more a human voice on
this platform
➔ try to estimate whether the consumer desires a reply or not
Weitzl (2019): constructive and vindictive complainants
Constructive: (on the right)
- Complaining goals can only be achieved by receiving a response from the company
- Receptive to webcare
- Seek for redress to restore relationship with brand
Use social media to increase public pressure to find a solution (Act of constructive feedback to
help the brand to improve its performance)
➔ Customer care and public relations (could be marketing if they got constructive feedback)
Vindictive: (on the left)
- Do not need a response from the company to achieve goal
- Webcare is rather inappropriate
- Complaints serve as means to reduce frustration and anxiety
- Thus: venting, harm the organization, warn others
➔ Public relations – control the reputation
Lecture 1: Introduction to Webcare
Webcare: The act of engaging in online interactions with (Complaining) consumers, by actively
searching the web to address consumer feedback (e.g. questions, concerns, and complaints ~ Van
Noort & Willemsen, 2012
In practice we can go back to 2010. KLM first engaged in conversation with customer complaints.
Beneficial because they could help people but also good for reputation management.
First only 1 employee now over a 100 employees monitoring social media and engaging in webcare.
90% of (large) organisations engages in webcare
Goals of webcare:
Webcare for customer care
- KLM is present on (Almost) every dosical media channel
- Messages about luggage, flights, reservation, delays, rebooking etc.
- Aim to respond within 50 minutes, in 14 different alnguages, 24/7
Customer care:
- Signal customer problems and solve them
- Meet or exceed the expectations of customers
- Customer’s negative ewom to positive ewom, recommendations
Webcare for public relations
- Others are watching too
- eWOM can influence people’s impression of the organisation (e.g. trust)
- organisation’s webcare demonstrates customers’ comments are taken seriously
- prevent (N)eWOM → crisis
- reputation & relationship management
individual vs. collective
,webcare for marketing purposes
- creating a good image
- enhancing brand evaluations
- message could go viral
- could convince others to purchase
- valuable feedback to improve their businesses
o e.g. KLM improved lost and found services when they saw people complaining
- webcare → social media campaigns (repost positive responses on own social media)
Developments of webcare:
Amount of customer messages per week for KLM (in 2015) –
60,000
➔ reasons for customer service chatbots.
➔ Increasing adoption of automated responses in
webcare / customer care
Webcare: The act of engaging in online interactions with
(complaining) consumers, by actively searching the web to
address consumer feedback (e.g., questions, concerns, and
complaints)” (Van Noort & Willemsen, 2012, p. 133)
- Monitoring: search on SNS but there’s also a selection of monitoring tools like
hootsuite/coosto/ob4wan etc. for quick investigations to see who’s talking about you and what
is their influence and respond to it.
- Considering: When to respond
o Block: making it impossible to post on a company’s (social media) page
▪ Advantage:
• Good to filter hate messages or other violations / spam accounts
• When you don’t want people to be associated with your company
▪ Disadvantages:
• People will find other ways to use NeWOM e.g. third parties or other
channels
• Less approachable/accessible
o Sensor/delete: at a minimum, 48% (of the sampled corporations, n = 12) are likely to
delete negative comments
▪ Detect censorship:
• Customer references to previous comments that are not available
(anymore)
• Corporate pages only contain positive comments
• Organization publicly announces that negative (or obscene, etc)
comments will not be published
• Or that postings that are not directly related to main topic are not
permitted
• Or that customer postings are not allowed at all
▪ Advantages:
• Privacy issues: you don’t want people to share their private info
▪ Disadvantages
• Can enhance negative feelings that you want to share even more
- Responding: organisations should respond, various studies indicated that people are more
satisfied after receiving a response in reply to NeWOM – but you have to know the
complainant.
, o What’s the customer’s intent?
o What are the customer’s desires?
o What are the motives?
o What gratifications is the customer looking for?
- Measuring:
Complainants with different desires
Grégoire et al. (2015): good, bad, and ugly complaints
Difference between whether a customer asks for help, or tries to damage the organization
- Good: directness & boasting
- Bad: badmouthing & tattling
- Ugly: spite & feeding the vultures
, Van Noort & Willemsen (2012)*: effects of proactive versus reactive webcare
Reactive: customer asks for responds or an @ mention is used. (on the right) → more need for a
response
Proactive: venting frustrations rather than seeking an solution. (on the left)
Findings:
- Responding to NeWOM by means of webcare increases brand evaluations (better to respond
than not to respond)
- No main difference between reactive / proactive approach
- But, did found a distinction for platform types
o Reactive: no platform difference on brand evaluations nor perceptions of human voice
(so always respond)
o Proactive: only respond on positive brand evaluations on a brand-generated platform
(in contrast to a consumer-generated platform) – can feel intrusive
▪ Also, people perceived the brand as demonstrating more a human voice on
this platform
➔ try to estimate whether the consumer desires a reply or not
Weitzl (2019): constructive and vindictive complainants
Constructive: (on the right)
- Complaining goals can only be achieved by receiving a response from the company
- Receptive to webcare
- Seek for redress to restore relationship with brand
Use social media to increase public pressure to find a solution (Act of constructive feedback to
help the brand to improve its performance)
➔ Customer care and public relations (could be marketing if they got constructive feedback)
Vindictive: (on the left)
- Do not need a response from the company to achieve goal
- Webcare is rather inappropriate
- Complaints serve as means to reduce frustration and anxiety
- Thus: venting, harm the organization, warn others
➔ Public relations – control the reputation
