如何应对社交媒体上的客户抱怨？

It is high season for customer complaints, when tourists take to social media to complain about their hotels or whine about expensive outings that failed to live up to expectations.

目前正值客户抱怨的旺季，当下游客们喜欢在社交媒体上发牢骚，抱怨他们住的酒店不好，或者旅行中花了冤枉钱。

For years, customer reps took comfort from the “service recovery paradox”, the counter-intuitive idea that, if they handled a complaint well, their company would emerge with an higher reputation than before.

多年来，客户服务代表们从“服务补救悖论”中获得了些许安慰，这种有违直觉的观点认为，如果客服能够圆满处理一起投诉，他们的公司就会赢得比以往更高的声誉。

To me, this notion has always looked as unsteady as a cheap deckchair on the beach. The proliferation of complaints on social media is bringing it closer to collapse. How people react when things go wrong surely depends on how much they suffer. Studies back my hunch. The paradox does exist but generally only when the service failure is not that severe, it has not happened before and the company had little control over what went wrong.

在我看来，这种观点就像海滩上的一把廉价躺椅一样不牢固。社交媒体上铺天盖地的抱怨令它更加濒临崩溃。当出现问题时，人们的反应无疑取决于他们遭了多大罪。我的这种直觉有研究印证。“服务补救悖论”的确存在，但一般仅限于当服务的失误没那么严重、之前也没有发生过、而且差错超出了企业的控制范围时。

I learnt this first-hand the other day at a screening of Dunkirk at London’s BFI IMAX cinema, run by Odeon. As we waited for the lights to go down, Mark, our host, announced: “Tonight, you will see Dunkirk as the director Christopher Nolan wanted it to be seen.” Except we did not. Instead, there was a long delay, as the projectionist wrestled with the 70mm analogue print.

前一段时间，我在欧迪恩(Odeon)旗下的伦敦BFI IMAX影院等待电影《敦刻尔克》(Dunkirk)放映时，对此有了切身体会。就在我们等着熄灯时，主持人马克宣布：“今晚，你们将会看到以导演克里斯托弗•诺兰(Christopher Nolan)想要呈现的格式放映的《敦刻尔克》。”我们不仅没看到。恰恰相反，由于放映员迟迟搞不定70毫米模拟印片，我们被耽搁了相当长的一段时间。

After 15 minutes of entertaining impromptu reflections on his hangover, his recent bad date and his favourite movies, Mark gave way to his manager, who apologised. Despite the build-up, Dunkirk would be shown in digital format. Those who had come expressly to see the 70mm version could leave and claim a full refund. Everyone else would receive a voucher for another big-screen presentation.

马克做了15分钟的即兴演说，回顾了自己宿醉的经历、最近糟糕的约会以及他钟爱的几部电影，之后，他的经理出面向我们道歉。即使做了宣传，《敦刻尔克》还得以数字格式放映。那些特地赶来欣赏70毫米胶片版的观众可以离场并要求全额退票。其他人则将获得观看另一部宽银幕电影的代金券一张。

Odeon seemed to have snatched triumph from potential disaster. I would happily return to the IMAX. The voucher was just a bonus. But of course I barely suffered. I still saw the movie. And, without Mark’s preamble, much of the audience, myself included, probably would not have noticed if it had been projected in analogue or digital. “What is ‘a print’?” was one of the audience questions Mark fielded as he valiantly busked through the delay.

欧迪恩似乎成功地完成了一次危机公关。我愿意再去那家IMAX影院。这张代金券纯属一个意外收获。当然，我也没什么损失。我还是看了电影。而且，如果马克事先不说，大部分观众，包括我在内，可能都不会注意影片是以模拟还是数字格式放映的。就在马克奋勇消磨延迟时还解答了一个观众的提问：“啥是印片?”。

Compare the experience of British Airways’ passengers who were stranded and separated from their luggage by an avoidable computer meltdown earlier this year. A dearth of information and an absence of frontline staff to deal with the problem exacerbated their predicament. No amount of compensation would have made those passengers overlook their ordeal, let alone recommend BA in future.

再来看另外一件事：今年早些时候，由于一次本可以避免的电脑故障，英国航空(British Airway)的乘客们被迫滞留机场，无法取回已托运的行李。不了解情况，又不见一线工作人员来解决问题，让他们的处境越发艰难。再多的补偿也无法令那些乘客对他们的遭遇释怀，更别提今后让他们向别人推荐英航了。

Or ask Roland Rust, founder of the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland’s business school, another sceptic about the paradox.

或者听一听马里兰大学(University of Maryland)商学院“卓越服务研究中心”(Center for Excellence in Service)创始人罗兰•拉斯特(Roland Rust)的看法，他是另一位对“服务补救悖论”持怀疑态度的人。

Last year, he and his wife, frequent flyers with United Airlines, endured what they claim was a catalogue of service failures on a trip to Europe. Prof Rust turned it into a case study. For instance, United offered the couple 15,000 “goodwill” frequent flyer miles each, even though he already had 3.5m unused miles in his United account. Is the compensation offer sufficient? Prof Rust asks his students, though his own verdict is obviously “nowhere near”.

拉斯特和他太太都是美国联合航空(United Airlines)的常客，去年，在一次欧洲之行中，拉斯特夫妇遭受了他们所说的一连串服务失误。拉斯特教授将这次经历整理成了一个研究案例。美联航给他们夫妻每人赔偿了1.5万英里的“善意”常客里程，虽然在他的美联航账户里还有350万未使用的里程。这样的补偿够吗?拉斯特教授问他的学生们，尽管他自己认为“远远不够”。

One lesson (apart from the self-evident one: never upset a customer service professor) is that many companies have become too “operationally oriented”, putting efficiency ahead of customer service. Another is that the power of cash compensation is overrated. A third is that what Prof Rust has dubbed the social media “echoverse” has eroded traditional measures of consumer sentiment — and changed how companies should respond.

一个教训(除了不言而喻的这个：永远别招惹一位研究客户服务的教授)是许多公司变得太过“以经营为导向”，将效率置于客户服务之上。另一个教训是现金补偿的作用被高估了。第三点是，拉斯特教授所说的社交媒体“回声效应”(echoverse)削弱了过去提振消费者信心的那些举措的效用——也改变了企业的应对方式。

Assessing word-of-mouth customer comments on Twitter since its launch in 2006, he and other researchers found that, in the early years, positive comments on service generated more upbeat posts. But, as the echoverse matured, users fell into a “negativity spiral”, sharing more and more bad experiences. Contrast that with the pre-internet age, when it was estimated that between 70 and 95 per cent of customers never bothered to complain.

自2006年推特上线以来，拉斯特和其他研究人员就开始对推特上消费者的评论进行评估，他们发现，在头几年，对服务的正面评价会引发更多的正面帖子。然而，随着回声效应日趋显著，用户陷入了“消极的漩涡”，越来越爱分享负面的经历。这与“前互联网时代”形成了反差，据估算那时有70%到95%的消费者从不抱怨。

When things do go wrong, companies now try to “bundle” their responses to complaints. One 1999 study by Amy Smith, Ruth Bolton and Janet Wagner found “process failures” such as inattentive waiters, left customers more dissatisfied than “outcome failures”, such as waiters not being available. If your airline now pesters you with an online survey asking how you rate “your check-in experience”, not just whether your flight was on time, this is why.

当出了差错时如何应对客户的抱怨，商家们现在试图“归纳整理”对策。1999年艾米•史密斯(Amy Smith)、露丝•博尔顿(Ruth Bolton)和珍妮特•瓦格纳(Janet Wagner)的一项研究发现，“过程失败”，如侍者粗心大意，会比“结果失败”，如找不着侍者，更令顾客感到不满。如果你的航空公司正缠着你做一项在线调查，让你评价“你的登机体验”，而不只是问你航班是否准点，就是这个原因。

Some modern solutions to customer complaints remain resolutely old-fashioned, verging on the obvious. Get it right first time, suggest some so-called experts.

处理客户抱怨的一些现代解决方案仍然固守传统套路，其中的道理几乎是显而易见的。一些所谓的专家建议，从第一次就要处理得当。

Companies have started trying to turn the echoverse to their advantage, however, by replying to individual gripes. The tactic means some corporate social media channels read more like “sorry media” with their litany of apologies, but it works in two ways. Direct responses damp down the initial complaint, and stay on the record for future customers hunting for online guidance.

不过，商家们已经开始试着利用回声效应，他们的做法是逐一回应客户的抱怨。这一策略意味着，因为不停地道歉，有些企业的社交媒体账户看起来更像“致歉媒体”，但这种做法也在两方面奏效。直接的回应平息了客户最初的不满，同时也让客户将来寻求在线指导有路可循。

The days when companies could rely on the service recovery paradox are long gone. But why not assume it still applies? There was no fighting on the beaches after my Dunkirk screening and, as far as I could tell, nobody asked for their money back. Even if there is little to gain in offering a sincere apology, applying a human touch and resuming good service, there is certainly nothing to lose and potentially a lot to learn.

商家们可以依赖“服务补救悖论”的时代早已一去不复返了。但何不假设它仍然适用呢?在我看完《敦刻尔克》后，并没发生什么争端，而且据我所知，没有人要求退款。即使真诚致歉、有人情味的安抚以及继续提供优质的服务不能为企业带来什么好处，但肯定也不会造成什么损失，而且企业还有可能从中学到很多。