Customer Service in the Weibo Era
Customer service in China is traditionally…well, not so great. Why? At least in part, it’s because companies don’t really have much to lose from treating customers badly. In such a giant marketplace, who cares if you had a bad experience when there are millions of other people out there to sell to? As a customer, there wasn’t much you could do. A major screw-up might be picked up by the news media, but other than that, you were pretty much stuck suffering with it.
That’s still true to an extent, but in the Weibo era, customers have a few more options. Today, for example, Shanghai Business carried a story about how CEOs on Weibo are being inundated with complaints. For example, the reporter found over 1000 recent complaints directed at Li Guoqing, CEO of Dangdang, a major e-commerce site. These weren’t complaints about the direction of the company, nor did they come from dissatisfied investors. One user wrote:
"I received broken audio visual products and when I complained Dangdang told me I would have to wait a month for a replacement! It’s truly more than I can bear."
「壊れたAV製品を受け取ったが、Dangdangに苦情を言ったところ、交換に1ヶ月待たないといけないと言われた!本当に堪えられない。」
「私は破損したオーディオビジュアル製品を受け取りました。そして、私が苦情を言うと、Dangdangは私に交換商品を１か月待たなければいけないと言いました。それは、私の許容範囲を越えるものです。」
「壊れたAV機器を受けとったのだが、文句を言った時、交換に１ヶ月待たなくてはいけないとDangdangに言われた。本当に耐え難いことです。」
Another consumer wrote to Li:
"I bought some books on Dangdang and when they arrived one was missing. Customer service has just ignored me. With customer service like this, even if you can successfully IPO, what’s the point?"
Of course, being able to complain directly to the CEO of a company doesn’t make your complaint any more likely to be addressed. But since Weibo posts are never deleted and the whole thing is searchable, it does make your complaints a matter of public record. They’re searchable and visible to other potential customers.
「Dangdangで本を何冊か買ったけど、一冊足りない状態で届いた。カスタマーサービスは取り合ってもくれなかった。こんなカスタマーサービスでは、株式新規公開で成功しても、いったい何の意味があるのでしょう？」
当然、CEOに直接苦情を言えるということはその苦情が処理されるということにはならない。Weiboの投稿は削除されることはなく、全ての投稿は検索可能で、その苦情を公開した記録に残すことができる。その苦情は将来の顧客たちも検索することができ、読むことができる。
「Dangdangで本をいくつか買ったのだが、商品が届いたときには一つ無くなっていた。カスタマーサービスは無視するし、こんなカスタマーサービスで新規株式公開で成功したとしても何の意味があるのか？」
もちろん、企業のCEOに直接苦情を訴えることができるとしても、苦情を対処してもらえそうにはない。しかし、Weiboの投稿は決して削除されないので、全て検索可能であり、あなたの苦情は公けに記録される問題となるのである。苦情は他の見込みある顧客にも検索でき、見えるようになっている。
Weibo, it seems, isn’t just an outlet for political frustrations that have nowhere else to go. It’s also increasingly an outlet for consumer frustrations, and one that companies ignore at their peril. If brands can be built on Weibo — and this is an idea many Chinese companies have embraced quite wholeheartedly — so too can they be destroyed. That doesn’t mean, of course, that your CEO has to be your new head of customer service. But if people are treating him that way — and Dangdang’s Li is far from the only CEO getting bombarded with complaints — that might be a good sign that your actual customer service team may need some adjustment.
The rules of commerce in China are changing as consumers increasingly have access to the feedback of previous customers and clients. Businesses that can’t keep up — or that insist on sticking to the old ways — may find themselves left behind by newer, more agile, and more customer friendly corporations.
That would be a good thing.
