Webcare & Conversational AI
DR. Christine Liebrecht & DR. Chris van der Lee
This summary includes all (online) lectures and literature to prepare for the exam.
Inhoud
Lecture 1: Introduction to webcare .................................................................................................. 2
Lecture 2: Webcare for customer care ............................................................................................. 6
Lecture 3: Webcare for public relations ......................................................................................... 10
Lecture 4: Webcare for online marketing ...................................................................................... 18
Lecture 5: AI for customer care ....................................................................................................... 24
Lecture 6: AI for reputation management and marketing .......................................................... 30
Lecture 7: The future of webcare and conversational AI ............................................................ 35
,Lecture 1: Introduction to webcare
Webcare: The act of engaging in online interactions with (Complaining) consumers, by
actively searching the web to address consumer feedback (e.g. questions, concerns, and
complaints ~ Van Noort & Willemsen, 2012
Goals of webcare:
- Customer care
o Signal customer problems and solve them
o Meet or exceed the expectations of customers
o Customer’s negative WOM (worth of mouth) to positive WOM,
recommendations
- Public relations
o Others are watching too
o eWOM can influence people’s impression of the organization
o Organisation’s webcare demonstrates customers’ comments are taken
seriously
o Prevent NeWOM → crisis
o Reputation & relationship management
- Marketing
o Creating a good image
o Enhancing brand evaluations
o Message could go viral
o Could convince others to purchase
o Valuable feedback to improve their businesses
o Webcare → social media campaigns
- Monitoring: search on media channels. Often a monitoring tool is used for quick
investigations to see who’s talking about you.
- Considering: should one engage in webcare?
o Block: making it impossible to post on a company’s page
▪ Adventage
• Good to filter hate messages or other violations/spam
accounts
• When you don’t want people to be associated with your
company
▪ Disadvantage
• People will find other ways to use NeWOM
• Less approachable/accessible
o Sensor/delete: at a minimum 48% of the companies are likely to delete
negative comments
▪ Detect censorship:
• Customers references to previous comments that are not
available (anymore)
• Corporate pages only contain positive comments
• Organization publicly announces that negative comments will
not be publishes
2
, • Or that posts that are not directly related to main topic are not
permitted
• Or that customer postings are not allowed at all
▪ Advantages
• Privacy issues: you don’t want people to share their private
info
• You force the audience to be respectful
▪ Disadvantages
• Can enhance negative feelings that you wat to share even
more
o Responding: organizations should respond, various studies indicated that
people are more satisfied after receiving a response in reply to NeWOM –
but you have to know the complainant.
Van Noort & Willemsen (2012 ) – Effects of proactive versus reactive webcare
Reactive: customer asks for responds or a @ mention is used
Proactive: venting frustration rather than seeking an solution
Findings:
- Responding to NeWOM by means of webcare increases brand evaluations
- No main difference between reactive / proactive approach on brand evaluations
- But, depends on platform type, such that
o Reactive: no platform difference on brand evaluation nor perceptions of
human voice (so always respond)
o Proactive: only respond on positive brand evaluations on a brand-generated
platform. On a consumer-generated platform it can feel intrusive.
o Also, people perceived the brand as demonstrating more a human voice on
this platform.
So: try to estimate whether the consumer desires a reply or not.
Weitzl (2019): constructive and vindictive complainants
Constructive:
- Complaining goals can only be achieved by receiving a response from the
company
- Receptive to webcare
- Seek for redress to restore relationship with brand
- Use social media to increase public pressure to find a solution
➔ Costumer care and public relations
Vindictive
- Do not need a response from the company to achieve goal
- Webcare is rather inappropriate
- Complaints serve as means to reduce frustration and anxiety
- Thus: venting, harm the organization, warn others
➔ Public relations – control the reputation
When and what to respond?
Congruent approach: When two factors match (desire to receive webcare and a
company’s response), outcome levels (complainant’s reactions) will be enhanced or be
greater than when the two factors are mismatched. Not responding to vindictive customers
3
, is congruent. Not responding to constructive customer would be incongruent with the
expectations.
Response strategies (SCCT, Coombs)
- Accommodative response: acknowledging the problem, take responsibility
o CCs respond most positively to ACCs because they are congruent with their
individual desires
- Defensive response: the company either insists that there is no problem, accuses
the complainant of wrongdoing or shifts the blame to others
o Inappropriate excuses to whitewash the brand, which makes CCs to
attribute the failure to internal and controllable problems that were
preventable by the company
- No response: the attempt to keep the brand away from the problem by remaining
silent / making meaningless comments or engaging in futile or short-sighted,
unhelpful reactions
o Ignoring CCs well-meant intention to solve the problem leads to the most
negative complainant responses
Ghosh & Mandal (2020): Webcare quality: conceptualization, scale development and
validaton
Dimensions of good webcare
1. Immediacy. The webcare is:
o Prompt
o Quick
o Not delayed
o Provides soon after I posted the review
2. Ownership. Who is the person behind the message
o After reading you know who to contact in the organization
o Contact details about the author
o Provides details of the designations of the author
o Provides clarity on the source
o No ambiguity regarding the source of the webcare
3. Comprehensiveness. Are all the elements in the response and does the employee
understand which problem the complainant has?
o Response is complete
o Information is exhaustive
o Addresses all the issues raised in the review
o All concerns/problems have been addressed
4. Civility.
o Courteous
o Written in friendly manner
o Polite in its style
o Apologises
5. Assurance. Assure the complainant it only happened one time and won’t happen
again.
o Promise no further mistakes
o Restore trust
o Gain confidence to avail the product/service again
o Make the costumer believe that the organization would not violate its
standard
6. Coherence
4
DR. Christine Liebrecht & DR. Chris van der Lee
This summary includes all (online) lectures and literature to prepare for the exam.
Inhoud
Lecture 1: Introduction to webcare .................................................................................................. 2
Lecture 2: Webcare for customer care ............................................................................................. 6
Lecture 3: Webcare for public relations ......................................................................................... 10
Lecture 4: Webcare for online marketing ...................................................................................... 18
Lecture 5: AI for customer care ....................................................................................................... 24
Lecture 6: AI for reputation management and marketing .......................................................... 30
Lecture 7: The future of webcare and conversational AI ............................................................ 35
,Lecture 1: Introduction to webcare
Webcare: The act of engaging in online interactions with (Complaining) consumers, by
actively searching the web to address consumer feedback (e.g. questions, concerns, and
complaints ~ Van Noort & Willemsen, 2012
Goals of webcare:
- Customer care
o Signal customer problems and solve them
o Meet or exceed the expectations of customers
o Customer’s negative WOM (worth of mouth) to positive WOM,
recommendations
- Public relations
o Others are watching too
o eWOM can influence people’s impression of the organization
o Organisation’s webcare demonstrates customers’ comments are taken
seriously
o Prevent NeWOM → crisis
o Reputation & relationship management
- Marketing
o Creating a good image
o Enhancing brand evaluations
o Message could go viral
o Could convince others to purchase
o Valuable feedback to improve their businesses
o Webcare → social media campaigns
- Monitoring: search on media channels. Often a monitoring tool is used for quick
investigations to see who’s talking about you.
- Considering: should one engage in webcare?
o Block: making it impossible to post on a company’s page
▪ Adventage
• Good to filter hate messages or other violations/spam
accounts
• When you don’t want people to be associated with your
company
▪ Disadvantage
• People will find other ways to use NeWOM
• Less approachable/accessible
o Sensor/delete: at a minimum 48% of the companies are likely to delete
negative comments
▪ Detect censorship:
• Customers references to previous comments that are not
available (anymore)
• Corporate pages only contain positive comments
• Organization publicly announces that negative comments will
not be publishes
2
, • Or that posts that are not directly related to main topic are not
permitted
• Or that customer postings are not allowed at all
▪ Advantages
• Privacy issues: you don’t want people to share their private
info
• You force the audience to be respectful
▪ Disadvantages
• Can enhance negative feelings that you wat to share even
more
o Responding: organizations should respond, various studies indicated that
people are more satisfied after receiving a response in reply to NeWOM –
but you have to know the complainant.
Van Noort & Willemsen (2012 ) – Effects of proactive versus reactive webcare
Reactive: customer asks for responds or a @ mention is used
Proactive: venting frustration rather than seeking an solution
Findings:
- Responding to NeWOM by means of webcare increases brand evaluations
- No main difference between reactive / proactive approach on brand evaluations
- But, depends on platform type, such that
o Reactive: no platform difference on brand evaluation nor perceptions of
human voice (so always respond)
o Proactive: only respond on positive brand evaluations on a brand-generated
platform. On a consumer-generated platform it can feel intrusive.
o Also, people perceived the brand as demonstrating more a human voice on
this platform.
So: try to estimate whether the consumer desires a reply or not.
Weitzl (2019): constructive and vindictive complainants
Constructive:
- Complaining goals can only be achieved by receiving a response from the
company
- Receptive to webcare
- Seek for redress to restore relationship with brand
- Use social media to increase public pressure to find a solution
➔ Costumer care and public relations
Vindictive
- Do not need a response from the company to achieve goal
- Webcare is rather inappropriate
- Complaints serve as means to reduce frustration and anxiety
- Thus: venting, harm the organization, warn others
➔ Public relations – control the reputation
When and what to respond?
Congruent approach: When two factors match (desire to receive webcare and a
company’s response), outcome levels (complainant’s reactions) will be enhanced or be
greater than when the two factors are mismatched. Not responding to vindictive customers
3
, is congruent. Not responding to constructive customer would be incongruent with the
expectations.
Response strategies (SCCT, Coombs)
- Accommodative response: acknowledging the problem, take responsibility
o CCs respond most positively to ACCs because they are congruent with their
individual desires
- Defensive response: the company either insists that there is no problem, accuses
the complainant of wrongdoing or shifts the blame to others
o Inappropriate excuses to whitewash the brand, which makes CCs to
attribute the failure to internal and controllable problems that were
preventable by the company
- No response: the attempt to keep the brand away from the problem by remaining
silent / making meaningless comments or engaging in futile or short-sighted,
unhelpful reactions
o Ignoring CCs well-meant intention to solve the problem leads to the most
negative complainant responses
Ghosh & Mandal (2020): Webcare quality: conceptualization, scale development and
validaton
Dimensions of good webcare
1. Immediacy. The webcare is:
o Prompt
o Quick
o Not delayed
o Provides soon after I posted the review
2. Ownership. Who is the person behind the message
o After reading you know who to contact in the organization
o Contact details about the author
o Provides details of the designations of the author
o Provides clarity on the source
o No ambiguity regarding the source of the webcare
3. Comprehensiveness. Are all the elements in the response and does the employee
understand which problem the complainant has?
o Response is complete
o Information is exhaustive
o Addresses all the issues raised in the review
o All concerns/problems have been addressed
4. Civility.
o Courteous
o Written in friendly manner
o Polite in its style
o Apologises
5. Assurance. Assure the complainant it only happened one time and won’t happen
again.
o Promise no further mistakes
o Restore trust
o Gain confidence to avail the product/service again
o Make the costumer believe that the organization would not violate its
standard
6. Coherence
4
