How businesses resolve customer complaining behavior effectively has been considered a “defensive marketing” strategy [12] or a “zero-defections” [22] strategy, which diminishes customer dissatisfaction. Handling customer dissatisfaction accompanies Web customer complaint management, which might be the critical issue for online customer service solutions and e-CRM. In this paper, the authors 1) investigate the current sources and causes of online complaints; 2) seek effective ways of handling customer complaints by examining different product types; and 3) provide guidelines for successful e-CRM. One thousand customer complaints from three different publicized e-business customer service centers and five hundred complaints from online feedback systems were analyzed in this study. The research findings suggest that e-businesses should 1) provide excellent online customer services because customer service is the most important factor in online customer satisfaction; 2) respond to customers’ requests/complaints fast because the response speed is more important in online customer satisfaction than offline; and 3) employ strategies that are appropriate for the product category in question.
Electronic Customer Relationship Management (e-CRM) is gaining the attention of e-business managers who are interested in increasing repeat business and customer loyalty [17]. Although e-marketers or e-researchers have addressed the importance of customer satisfaction and customer retention, the issues of customer dissatisfaction and complaints in the Web environment have rarely been investigated. Online customer complaints, as a Web-enabled market feedback, have illuminated the origins and causes of online customer dissatisfaction. Online customer complaints also show how e-businesses handle customer complaints – a reflection of how much they value their customers. Successful e-CRM requires adherence to a stable and consistent strategy that focuses on the goals of maintaining customer loyalty and of using complaint handling data to solve problems and address issues raised by customers [5, 6, 19]. The key e-CRM components to be discussed in this paper include: i) maximizing customer satisfaction/minimizing customer dissatisfaction; ii) increasing customer loyalty; iii) increasing product/service quality; and iv) resolving customer complaints
Previous studies of customer complaining behavior have provided insights to businesses regarding which changes should be made to remedy customer problems or restitute purchase or usage-related problems [32]. This study proposed that handling customer complaints should be included as a key component of e-CRM. By examining complaint data, this study found that major online customer complaints and dissatisfaction have been generated from the problems with Web customer service centers. This result has implications for how e-businesses’ customer service centers should manage customer complaints effectively. Specifically, this study suggests that e-businesses should give faster feedback responses in an accurate and kindly manner. Online customer service centers (also referred to as “Web-enabled customer contact centers”: http://www.iir-ny.com) could provide online chat services to their customers, more efficient customer self-help centers, or a combination of several customer communication channels (http://www.rightnow.com). Synchronous feedback system, of course, is the fastest means of communication online. The primary point is that the lack of a rapid response tends to increase the intensity of the original complaint. This study found that most of the current online customer service centers, e.g., reviewed in this study, do not use a synchronous feedback system. Therefore, online complaints are often augmented by customers who request rapid feedback. The results also suggest that e-businesses should employ product category-dependent strategies. Those e-businesses dealing with sensory products (e.g., clothing, shoes, or cosmetics) need to develop better means of delivering product information to customers who obviously cannot touch, taste, or smell the object they are thinking of buying. Such e-businesses should put more efforts on issues such as Web interface, design, and highly advanced technologies, etc. An excellent example of using advanced Web features to achieve this goal can be found at landsend.com. The company helps customers build a three-dimensional mirror image known as “My Virtual Model™.” Those companies offer highly interactive communication to reach customer satisfaction. Thus, by making such effort, online companies dealing with sensory product can decrease customer dissatisfaction and complaints. In summary, when approached as a defensive marketing strategy [12], complaint management is now considered an excellent competitive tool for e-businesses. Taking complaint management seriously also affects product/service quality, website design, and operational policies. Finally, the results of this and studies that appropriate online complaint management facilitates repeat business and customer loyalty [12]. Efforts toward the effective resolution of customer problems serve as the basis for long-term product and successful e-CRM.