Organisational Complaint Management

Abstract

This chapter highlights the relevance of organisational complaint management. Advantages of customer complaints are outlined from a company perspective as well as from a customer perspective in the context of businessto-customer relationships. It is emphasized that complaining customers are beneficial for companies as they can identify weaknesses of service encounters or products. After a successful service recovery, companies might have the opportunity of regaining previously dissatisfied customers. However, a larger part of customers stay nevertheless silent after a dissatisfying incident. Therefore, this chapter focuses on the importance of complaint channels as precondition for customers to voice their complaints to companies. Several complaint channels are identified, including traditional ones (such as mail, e-mail, phone, face-to-face) and a potential emerging channel: online social networks. Finally, this chapter elaborates the scientific contribution of this study and outlines the structure of the remaining chapters.