Reflections On 20 Years Of Investigating Rage & The New Age Of Rage
THIS IS THE TENTH EDITION OF THE NATIONAL CUSTOMER RAGE SURVEY
This wave of the National Customer Rage Survey marks the tenth edition of the rage study, dating back to 2003. Truth be told, we never imagined that the study would resonate with so many different professional communities across the world. In fact, when we commissioned the inaugural survey in 2003, it wasn’t named the National Customer Rage Survey, and the construct ‘customer rage’ wasn’t even in our line of sight.
The 1976 White House Study On Consumer Complaint Handling: The Forebearer Of Today’s National Customer Rage Survey
Our primary objective at the time was to replicate what some have regarded as the seminal study of customer care in America: the so-called White House study, Consumer Complaint Handling in America, which was conducted in 1976 by TARP for the US Office of Consumer Affairs. The White House study is no less than a profoundly important study that fueled the customer experience field as we know it today. It was among the very first research efforts to connect the dots between a better customer experience and corporate profitability. And the marketplace owes a debt of gratitude to Marc Grainer and John Goodman – the authors of the White House study – for their foresight and expertise. The White House study ultimately elevated the field of customer care from a back-office consideration to a boardroom topic. Thus, in 2003, as more than a generation had passed since the 1976 TARP study, we had good reason to believe that – when it came to complaint handling satisfaction – things must have improved (or at least changed!). In the midst of finalizing our 2003 plans to replicate the 1976 TARP study, I read an article in the Washington Post reporting that metro Washington, DC retailers were struggling mightily to retain frontline staff who felt that they were underpaid and wearied from serving hysterical customers (funny how such megatrends can sometimes repeat themselves). A bit more digging on the topic of angry customers revealed that we seemed to know very little about the incidence of rage in the broader marketplace, and even less about the behaviors and motivations of such hostile customers. Back then, the empirical research that had been done on angry customers was rather limited and niche in nature. National Customer Rage Survey 4 Given the circumstances, it seemed obvious (to me, anyhow) that a replication of the 1976 TARP study afforded us a convenient opportunity to learn a little more about the dark side of the customer experience. My co-author of what was to become the rage study – Marc Grainer – thought that wasting time exploring marginal concepts such as ‘customer rage’ was a silly idea. Eventually, Marc capitulated to my proposal to include a few exploratory questions about belligerent customers. And the National Customer Rage Survey was born.
Customer Rage Is Mutating Like A Virus & It’s Imperative That The National Customer Rage Survey Evolve To Keep Up With The New Age Of Rage.
Fast forward 20 years to today. For two decades, customer experience practitioners, consumers, academics and journalists from all over the world have increasingly sought out insights from the National Customer Rage Survey to deepen their understanding of how companies and organizations go about the critically important business of resolving product and service complaints. In the past few years, the number of daily requests for the results of our 2020 rage study results has more than tripled. Why has there been such a dramatic shift of awareness and interest in customer rage? Maybe it’s because customer rage is no longer a rare occurrence in the marketplace. The incidence and public displays of customer rage are commonplace, on the increase and can be scary. And the individuals acting out in rageful fashion can, many times, border on dangerous. Or perhaps we’re all the more sensitive and attuned to everyday marketplace hostility given its media portrayal. What about the rage sparked by socio-political divisions and unrest in the country? All of these considerations deserve attention in any thoughtful dialectic about customer rage. One thing is for certain: the rage we first explored in 2003 has evolved and mutated considerably over the past 20 years. As such, the 10th edition of the current National Customer Rage Survey marks a pivotal point in expanding the scope of our inquiry about customer rage. Hence, in this study, we have chosen to investigate more closely what we see as two predominant forms of marketplace conflict today: customer rage and customer uncivility.
The New Age Of Rage: Unraveling Customer Rage & Customer Uncivility.
Keeping fidelity with our traditional conceptualization of angry customers, we resume our in-depth examination of marketplace conflict that stems from what might be referred to as ‘commercial transactions gone wrong’. From this vantage point, customer rage has to do with the end-to-end customer experience related to the specific and most serious product/service problems customers encountered during the past year with companies, non-profit organizations and government agencies. The 2023 version of the study therefore continues to examine the varied facets of customer rage including how often it occurs, how it’s expressed, why it happens and – importantly – the profound consequences of such behavior. We are especially drawn to the growth and shifts of social media rage and shaming. At the same time, we believe one cannot ignore the more recent and combative form of marketplace conflict that we refer to as customer uncivility. For the purposes of our study, customer uncivility is defined as the phenomenon of rude, discourteous and disrespectful customer behavior stemming from socio-political conflicts between customers and companies/organizations. Making its initial foray into customer uncivility, the National Customer Rage Survey considers the frequency and types of exposure customers have to uncivility, the factors that are perceived to be the primary causes of uncivility, the media portrayal of uncivil customers, the specific behaviors that are viewed as ‘civil’ and ‘uncivil’ and the actions customers expect companies to take in an effort to curb uncivility.
