FROM: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/01/07/3358162/customers-find-new-ways-to-bite.html
By SCOTT CANON
The Kansas City Star
When Albert Hirschman published his landmark treatise “Exit, Voice and Loyalty” more than 40 years ago, he unwittingly helped to predict what Twitter might do to capitalism.
In Hirschman’s framework, consumers had essentially two ways to deal with dissatisfaction. They could take their business elsewhere — exit — and if enough others fled, a business might shape up. Or they could gripe — Hirschman used “voice” as a verb — to management.
The problem with exiting has always been that there’s probably a reason you went to Acme Co. in the first place. As for voicing your complaints, well, one unhappy customer isn’t the strongest argument for change.
Consumers could launch letter-writing campaigns, muster boycotts or man picket lines. But how much effort are most of us willing to expend over a restaurant’s wilted salad or a phone company’s seemingly unreasonable service fee?
As it turns out, enough to peck out 140 characters on a phone.
Suddenly with outlets like Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr and YouTube, Hirschman’s single “voice” becomes a thunderous electronic shout, echoed across the Internet by thousands, perhaps millions of other similarly fuming souls. Maybe overnight.
“The Internet magnifies the voice that consumers can have,” said Mark Cooper, the research director for the Consumer Federation of America. “The impact of voice is becoming more and more important.”
In an anemic economy, we’re less likely to take fee hikes and perceived rip-offs quietly. We’re mad as hell, and with social media at our disposal, maybe we don’t have to take it anymore.
Just ask Verizon Wireless, Bank of America, Netflix or other companies that have seen customer uprisings.
In late December, for instance, Verizon announced it would charge customers $2 to make single bill payments to Verizon online or over their phones. That quickly ignited outrage that a company would demand more money simply to settle a bill. Blog posts, tweets and news stories channeled consumer anger.
Verizon quickly retreated.
“At Verizon,” company President Dan Mead said in a news release, “we take great care to listen to our customers. Based on their input, we believe the best path forward is to encourage customers to take advantage of the best and most efficient options, eliminating the need to institute the fee at this time.”
Just why this particular corporate move generated such furious buzz may be impossible to tell. Perhaps Verizon was clumsy in its announcement. Maybe its wireless customers have become more weary of their monthly bills than they are excited about their fancy phones.
But how it moved from fed-up customers to embarrassed corporate brass is another lesson in Digital Age economics.
“There’s been a change in the balance of power,” said Glynn Mangold, a professor of marketing and emerging technologies at Murray State University. “Communication has been democratized.”
• • •
Reasonable people can disagree about just how bone-headed or unfair any company decision ranks. It’s all in the eye of the beholder, although the customer is certainly a critical beholder.
Not terribly long ago, to reach a mass audience you needed access to a printing press or a broadcast license. Today, each of us has the potential to spark a grassroots revolt. Success may depend on the cleverness or merits of a rant, the number of Twitter followers or blog readers a complainer can draw, or how quickly a gripe gets amplified by more traditional media.
But to a level that hasn’t existed before, companies exist in peril of triggering objections that come fast and loud.
Dave Greenbaum of Lawrence was flying from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Detroit in October. He’d gone to great lengths beforehand to book an exit row. He wanted the extra leg room. Once aboard the Delta flight, he found that while he was in an exit row, it wasn’t the roomy kind.
After takeoff, he used the plane’s in-flight Wi-Fi service to tweet his disappointment. Within minutes the @DeltaAssist tweeter had reassigned him, midflight, to an exit row with the leg room he’d expected. He dished out a Twitter compliment to Delta, visible to his 900-plus Twitter followers.
Two months later he sat in the high-end seats at AMC’s Studio in Olathe and was bummed that the delivery of drinks and popcorn to his seats was surpassing 20 minutes. He tweeted his complaint. Three days later, too late for his taste, AMC gave him free movie passes as an apology.
“I use Twitter … when I think the public nature of it might get a better response,” said Greenbaum, who runs a computer repair business. “You use Twitter for complaining because you want action.”
Country musician Dave Carroll blamed United Airlines for busting his beloved guitar on a 2008 trip to Omaha, Neb. In a previous time, he might have been left simply to plead customer-to-employee for reimbursement from the airline. But in this age, he could produce a YouTube video called “United Breaks Guitars.”
The airline would ultimately offer some compensation and ask to use the musical satire in employee training. In the meantime, the video has logged 11.3 million views and counting.
Heather Armstrong, a star of the so-called mommy blogging set, found Maytag’s answers to complaints about her pricey new washing machine unsatisfactory. She tweeted: “So that you may not have to suffer like we have: DO NOT EVER BUY A MAYTAG. I repeat: OUR MAYTAG EXPERIENCE HAS BEEN A NIGHTMARE.” Shortly after, a repairman was dispatched and the company offered a free new machine that went to a local shelter.
Netflix was battered from all directions on the Internet last year when it decided to split its subscriptions for DVDs by mail from its video streaming service, essentially doubling the price for customers who wanted both. The company ultimately stuck with the change, saying the economics of the business left it no choice. Still, it felt obliged to apologize for how it handled the change. It was another example of a company humbled by consumer outrage that might have boiled privately in another era.
“It happens so much more quickly and publicly now,” said Aaron Deacon, who runs consumer insights and strategy firm CurioLab in Kansas City. “You can make a comment through social media to see if companies are listening. Sometimes they are, and sometimes they do respond.”
In fact, businesses that once courted customers and nurtured their brands strictly through traditional mass media advertising now find themselves defending their images on multiple fronts.
Consider Kansas City International Airport, where a push is under way to leave behind its three-terminal design — largely popular for its convenience among local users but often a frustration for travelers simply passing through.
“Kansas City airport is ridiculous,” @AshleyClark138 tweeted recently. “Crowded, awkward, long bathroom lines. I mean come on! One bathroom WITHIN security! It’s remodel time.”
Justin Meyer, KCI’s manager of air service development and sometimes voice behind the @KCIairport Twitter account, will occasionally see such complaints and tweet suggestions on switching terminals or finding a meal.
“It’s this instant venting people do when they’re upset,” Meyer said. “We’re like any other brand in social media. … We can engage these people.”
• • •
Often the rush to sound off through sundry social media isn’t so much an attempt to reach out to officialdom, but to send up a virtual flare to others who share your pain. If they repeat a complaint, it gains volume and leverage.
“There’s power in numbers,” said Kansas State University marketing professor Kevin Gwinner. He’s written about the power of “electronic word-of-mouth” communication and how ratings sites like Yelp and Epinions are becoming powerful resources that businesses can’t afford to ignore.
Bank of America announced in September that it was going to impose a $5 monthly debit card fee, a charge it said was necessary as new regulations restricted other charges. Perhaps driven by the vibe generated by movements like the tea party or Occupy Wall Street emboldening the little guy to take on the suits, the corporation was swamped with howls of protest. By November, it was backing off.
“It’s the nickel-and-diming of things that causes the outrage,” said Martin Hamburger, a Democratic political consultant. “They’re small and highly irritating things where people think they might be able to make a difference.”
He said larger issues of public policy — speed limits, abortion regulation, taxes — are less vulnerable to bottom-up overnight revolts. It can cost millions to mount a statewide petition campaign, millions more to elect sympathetic politicians. Desktop crusades to change the world with Facebook posts and forwarded emails have been derided as slacktivism — tries at changing the world without a willingness to rally the needed effort. And for big, contentious issues, tools like Twitter are hardly enough to change the world.
The Arab Spring of uprisings in the Middle East might have benefited from various Internet tools that speeded ad hoc organizations, but it was the regularly dangerous street protests that drew the world’s attention and toppled regimes.
More minimum-effort activism succeeds when the stakes are different, when a business or other institution figures to lose more in rotten publicity than it might gain from sticking by a decision.
And the merits matter. Chris Crandall, a psychology professor at the University of Kansas, said the legitimacy of a cause could determine its ability to go viral and draw support.
If a health insurance company explains that it’s increasing a fee because of a new government regulation, for example, people might grouse but they’ll pay. But if they see a charge as simply some manifestation of greed, Crandall said, they’re far more likely to resist and to take their objections public.
“When the unfairness is clear and illegitimate, it makes us angry,” Crandall said. “When we have an option to escape as well, then the public has the leverage to make a company change.”
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