Webcare and conversational AI -
lectures
Algemene informatie
Set up
- Online video (thursday)
- Individual weekly questions (hand in before monday 10.00)
- Seminars on tuesday: discussion on the weekly question, in class activities by one of the
teams and work on the group assignment.
Exam (60%)
- Individual
- Open essay questions (similar to the weekly questions)
- All materials discussed in the course
Group assignment (40%)
- Team 4-5 students (enrollment thursday morning)
- In class activity during one of the seminars
- Content analysis study related to a case from practice (this friday introduction; dutch
national police)
- Written report
- You will analyze webcare conversations between citizens and police departments
on X in two ways: analysis with AI and manual analysis.
-
lecture 1
What is webcare?
Definition: “the act of engaging in online interactions with (complaining) consumers, by actively
searching the web to address consumers feedback (e.g. questions, concerns and complaints).
Monitoring - considering - responding - measuring
Monitoring: monitoring tools
Considering:
, 1. Block: making it impossible to post on a companies (social media) page
Advantages? Only when there is real misbehavior otherwise there are no real advantages.
Disadvantages? You can't really stop people online, does not prevent negative eWOM
Under what circumstances is blocking permitted?
2. Sensor/ delete: removing negative comments
How to detect censorship?
Customer references to previous comments that are not available (anymore)
Corporate pages only obtain positive comments
Organizations publicly announce that negative comments will not be published or that postings
that are not directly related to main topics are not permitted or that customers postings are not
allowed et al.
Advantages? When norms and values are violated it could be an advantage to delete messages
that contain violating text.
Disadvantages?
3. Respond: organizations should respond, various studies indicate that people are more
satisfied after receiving a response in reply to NeWOM.
But, several factors come into play:
- What is customers intent
- What are customers desire
- What are the customers motive
-> know the complainant
Complaints with different desires -> When to respond?
Proactive: reacting when the consumer does not specifically ask for a reaction
Reactive: reacting to someone who asks for a reaction
Findings
- Responding to the NeWOM by means of webcare increases brand evaluations
- No main difference between reactive/proactive approach on brand evaluations, but
depends on platform
- Reactive: no platform differences on brand evaluations nor perceptions of human
voice
- Proactive: more positive evaluations on a brand-generated platform (in contrast
to a consumer generated platform)
- Also, people perceived the brand as demonstrating more of a human voice on
this platform
Constructive vs vindictive
Constructive
Characteristics of constructive complainers:
- Complaining goals can only be achieved by receiving a response form the company
- Receptive to webcare
- Seek for redress to restore relationship with brand
- Use social media to increase public pressure to find a solution
, - Acts of constructive criticism to help the brand to improve its performance
Vindictive: Just venting about the company
Characteristics of a vindictive complainer
- 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
-> verschillende types van klachten hebben verschillende doeleinden en kunnen geschaard
worden onder de verschillende types: customer care, public relations of marketing.
When and what to respond?
Theoretical basis
-> Construence approach
-> Response strategies (derived from Coombs’ SCCT
- Accommodative response
- Defensive response
- No response
Findings constructive complainants
Accommodative: CCs respond more positively to ACCs because they are co congruent with
their individual desires (e.g. redress seeking)
Defensive: inappropriate excuses to white wash the brand, which makes them to attribute the
failure to internal and controllable problems that were preventable by the company
No response: ignoring CCs well meant intention to solve the problem leads to the most negative
complainant response (e.g. unfavorable brand image).
Findings vindictive complaints
Immune against any type of webcare as these response do not facilitate VCs complaining
objectives (e.g. harming the brand)
Both (desired) NOR and brand-defending response (i.e. DEF) don't necessarily lead to a strong
negative effect (i.e. escalation)
VCs are completely unaffected by ACCs; immune against social/psychological (e.g. sincere
apology, detailed explanation and promises) and economic/tangible benefits (e.g. refunds,
coupons and free gifts).
Evaluating webcare quality
What is good webcare? Content of the response can be oke but there are more dimensions
such as the time in which the company responds
Which dimensions are there?
1) Immediacy: the webcare is prompt, quick, not delayed, provided soon after i posted the
review.
, 2) Ownership: after reading the webcare, i know whom to contact in the organization. The
webcare had contact details about the person who had written it. The webcare provides
details of the designation of the person who has written it. The webcare provides clarity
on the source. There is no ambiguity regarding the source of the webcare.
3) Comprehensiveness: the response provided by the organization is complete. The
information in the webcare is exhaustive. The webcare addresses all the issues raised in
the review. All my concerns/ problems have been addressed in the webcare.
4) Civility: the webcare is courteous, written friendly, polite in its style and the organization
apologizes through the webcare.
5) Assurance: the organization promises no further mistakes in the webcare. The webcare
incites trust in me that I can avail the products/ services again. After reading the
webcare, I feel that the organization would not violate its standards.
6) Coherence: the webcare provides a reasonable explanation behind the problems that
happened. The reasons behind the mistakes committed by the organization are logical.
The actions of the organization are justified in the webcare in a rational manner. After
reading the webcare, I understand why the problems occurred.
7) Retention: after reading the webcare, i understand that the organization aims at
maintaining a long-term relationship with me. The webcare urges me to continue my
relationship with the organization. The webcare encourages me to avail the
products/services again. After reading the webcare, I understand that the organization is
keen to retain me as a valued customer.
8) Personalisation: the webcare addresses my specific comments, which are made in my
review. The response given to me is not similar to other responses given by the
organization to other customers. The response is unique to my review that I posted/ the
webcare is written specially for me. After reading the webcare, I feel that it has given
personalized or individual attention to my issues/ concerns.
9) Elaborateness: the webcare is written in an elaborate manner using many words, the
webcare is long and detailed. The webcare had been extensively written to address my
issues/concerns.
Customer care
- Signal customer problems and solve them
- Meet or exceed the expectations of customers
- Customers NeWOM -> PeWOM, recommendations
Example KLM
- KLM is present on (almost) every social media platform
- Message about luggage, flights, reservations, displays, rebooking, etc.
- Aim to respond within 60 min, in 14 different languages 24/7
Public relations
- Other are watching too
- eWOM can influence people impression of the organization
- Organizations webcare demonstrates customers comments are taken seriously
lectures
Algemene informatie
Set up
- Online video (thursday)
- Individual weekly questions (hand in before monday 10.00)
- Seminars on tuesday: discussion on the weekly question, in class activities by one of the
teams and work on the group assignment.
Exam (60%)
- Individual
- Open essay questions (similar to the weekly questions)
- All materials discussed in the course
Group assignment (40%)
- Team 4-5 students (enrollment thursday morning)
- In class activity during one of the seminars
- Content analysis study related to a case from practice (this friday introduction; dutch
national police)
- Written report
- You will analyze webcare conversations between citizens and police departments
on X in two ways: analysis with AI and manual analysis.
-
lecture 1
What is webcare?
Definition: “the act of engaging in online interactions with (complaining) consumers, by actively
searching the web to address consumers feedback (e.g. questions, concerns and complaints).
Monitoring - considering - responding - measuring
Monitoring: monitoring tools
Considering:
, 1. Block: making it impossible to post on a companies (social media) page
Advantages? Only when there is real misbehavior otherwise there are no real advantages.
Disadvantages? You can't really stop people online, does not prevent negative eWOM
Under what circumstances is blocking permitted?
2. Sensor/ delete: removing negative comments
How to detect censorship?
Customer references to previous comments that are not available (anymore)
Corporate pages only obtain positive comments
Organizations publicly announce that negative comments will not be published or that postings
that are not directly related to main topics are not permitted or that customers postings are not
allowed et al.
Advantages? When norms and values are violated it could be an advantage to delete messages
that contain violating text.
Disadvantages?
3. Respond: organizations should respond, various studies indicate that people are more
satisfied after receiving a response in reply to NeWOM.
But, several factors come into play:
- What is customers intent
- What are customers desire
- What are the customers motive
-> know the complainant
Complaints with different desires -> When to respond?
Proactive: reacting when the consumer does not specifically ask for a reaction
Reactive: reacting to someone who asks for a reaction
Findings
- Responding to the NeWOM by means of webcare increases brand evaluations
- No main difference between reactive/proactive approach on brand evaluations, but
depends on platform
- Reactive: no platform differences on brand evaluations nor perceptions of human
voice
- Proactive: more positive evaluations on a brand-generated platform (in contrast
to a consumer generated platform)
- Also, people perceived the brand as demonstrating more of a human voice on
this platform
Constructive vs vindictive
Constructive
Characteristics of constructive complainers:
- Complaining goals can only be achieved by receiving a response form the company
- Receptive to webcare
- Seek for redress to restore relationship with brand
- Use social media to increase public pressure to find a solution
, - Acts of constructive criticism to help the brand to improve its performance
Vindictive: Just venting about the company
Characteristics of a vindictive complainer
- 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
-> verschillende types van klachten hebben verschillende doeleinden en kunnen geschaard
worden onder de verschillende types: customer care, public relations of marketing.
When and what to respond?
Theoretical basis
-> Construence approach
-> Response strategies (derived from Coombs’ SCCT
- Accommodative response
- Defensive response
- No response
Findings constructive complainants
Accommodative: CCs respond more positively to ACCs because they are co congruent with
their individual desires (e.g. redress seeking)
Defensive: inappropriate excuses to white wash the brand, which makes them to attribute the
failure to internal and controllable problems that were preventable by the company
No response: ignoring CCs well meant intention to solve the problem leads to the most negative
complainant response (e.g. unfavorable brand image).
Findings vindictive complaints
Immune against any type of webcare as these response do not facilitate VCs complaining
objectives (e.g. harming the brand)
Both (desired) NOR and brand-defending response (i.e. DEF) don't necessarily lead to a strong
negative effect (i.e. escalation)
VCs are completely unaffected by ACCs; immune against social/psychological (e.g. sincere
apology, detailed explanation and promises) and economic/tangible benefits (e.g. refunds,
coupons and free gifts).
Evaluating webcare quality
What is good webcare? Content of the response can be oke but there are more dimensions
such as the time in which the company responds
Which dimensions are there?
1) Immediacy: the webcare is prompt, quick, not delayed, provided soon after i posted the
review.
, 2) Ownership: after reading the webcare, i know whom to contact in the organization. The
webcare had contact details about the person who had written it. The webcare provides
details of the designation of the person who has written it. The webcare provides clarity
on the source. There is no ambiguity regarding the source of the webcare.
3) Comprehensiveness: the response provided by the organization is complete. The
information in the webcare is exhaustive. The webcare addresses all the issues raised in
the review. All my concerns/ problems have been addressed in the webcare.
4) Civility: the webcare is courteous, written friendly, polite in its style and the organization
apologizes through the webcare.
5) Assurance: the organization promises no further mistakes in the webcare. The webcare
incites trust in me that I can avail the products/ services again. After reading the
webcare, I feel that the organization would not violate its standards.
6) Coherence: the webcare provides a reasonable explanation behind the problems that
happened. The reasons behind the mistakes committed by the organization are logical.
The actions of the organization are justified in the webcare in a rational manner. After
reading the webcare, I understand why the problems occurred.
7) Retention: after reading the webcare, i understand that the organization aims at
maintaining a long-term relationship with me. The webcare urges me to continue my
relationship with the organization. The webcare encourages me to avail the
products/services again. After reading the webcare, I understand that the organization is
keen to retain me as a valued customer.
8) Personalisation: the webcare addresses my specific comments, which are made in my
review. The response given to me is not similar to other responses given by the
organization to other customers. The response is unique to my review that I posted/ the
webcare is written specially for me. After reading the webcare, I feel that it has given
personalized or individual attention to my issues/ concerns.
9) Elaborateness: the webcare is written in an elaborate manner using many words, the
webcare is long and detailed. The webcare had been extensively written to address my
issues/concerns.
Customer care
- Signal customer problems and solve them
- Meet or exceed the expectations of customers
- Customers NeWOM -> PeWOM, recommendations
Example KLM
- KLM is present on (almost) every social media platform
- Message about luggage, flights, reservations, displays, rebooking, etc.
- Aim to respond within 60 min, in 14 different languages 24/7
Public relations
- Other are watching too
- eWOM can influence people impression of the organization
- Organizations webcare demonstrates customers comments are taken seriously
