Notes from the Webcare course lessons in the Communication and Information Sciences course at Tilburg University. Supplemented with notes from the mandatory scientific articles. The document is written in English.
Summary Webcare
Lecture 1.................................................................................................................................................3
Webcare is a process..........................................................................................................................3
Goals of webcare (Van Noort et al., 2014)..........................................................................................3
Good, bad, and ugly complaints (Grégoire et al., 2015)......................................................................3
Six types of social media complaints...............................................................................................4
How managers should address the different types of complaints..................................................5
Constructive and vindictive complainants (Weitzl, 2019)...................................................................6
Response strategies........................................................................................................................6
Lecture 2.................................................................................................................................................6
Characteristics of customer service....................................................................................................6
Justice theory......................................................................................................................................6
Customers after a double deviation (Joireman et al., 2016)...............................................................7
Effects of proactive versus reactive webcare (Van Noort & Willemsen, 2012)....................................7
Customer service or privacy infringement? (Demmers et al., 2018)...................................................7
Uses and gratifications (Liebrecht & van Hooijdonk, 2022)................................................................7
Uses and gratifications theory........................................................................................................8
Lecture 3.................................................................................................................................................8
Chatbot journey................................................................................................................................10
Why would people use chatbots? (Brandtzaeg & Folstad, 2017)......................................................10
Unified Theory of Adoption and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) (Melián-González et al., 2021).........10
Chatbot challenges...........................................................................................................................11
Challenge 1: Chatbot introductions (Van Hooijdonk et al., 2023).................................................11
Challenge 2: Tone of voice (Araujo, 2018).....................................................................................12
What could chatbot developers learn from webcare employees?....................................................13
CHV cues in chatbots (Liebrecht & Van der Weegen, 2019)......................................................13
CHV cues in chatbots (Van Hooijdonk & Liebrecht., 2021)........................................................13
Humanlike chatbots: conclusions.....................................................................................................13
Uncanny valley..............................................................................................................................13
Lecture 4...............................................................................................................................................13
Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) (Coombs & Holladay, 2008)..................................14
Attribution Theory........................................................................................................................14
Image Restoration Theory.............................................................................................................14
Situational Crisis Communication Theory.....................................................................................14
Coomb’s SCCT response strategies applied to webcare (Van Hooijdonk & Liebrecht, 2021)....15
1
, The effect of CHV and reply length on observers’ perceptions of complaint handling (Javornik et al.,
2020)................................................................................................................................................15
Signaling Theory...........................................................................................................................15
Webcare efforts and costs (Jeesha & Purani, 2021)..........................................................................16
Lecture 5...............................................................................................................................................17
Responding to PeWOM.....................................................................................................................17
Why would customers express eWOM?.......................................................................................17
When to respond?............................................................................................................................18
Responding to PeWOM and surprise (Schamari & Schaefers, 2015).............................................18
Risks of responding to PeWOM (Jeesha & Purani, 2021)..............................................................18
The influence of the context (Crijns et al., 2017)..........................................................................18
Using humour...................................................................................................................................19
Motivations to use humour..........................................................................................................19
Humour types...............................................................................................................................19
Why use humour? (Béal & Grégoire, 2022)..................................................................................20
Lecture 6...............................................................................................................................................20
Reflections on chatbots....................................................................................................................20
Humans versus chatbots (Lew & Walther, 2022)..........................................................................20
Reflections on humans (Gosh & Mandal, 2020)................................................................................21
Future of webcare research (Lopes et al., 2023)...............................................................................22
2
, Lecture 1
What is webcare: The act of engaging in online interactions with (complaining) customers, by actively
searching the web to address consumer feedback (e.g., questions, concerns, and complaints). (Van
Noort & Willemsen, 2012).
Webcare is a process
Monitoring: there are a lot of monitoring tools that can do research on all different
platforms. It often gives you the option to respond and do sentiment analysis as well.
Considering: are we going to respond? There are different options:
o Blocking: customers aren’t able to post anything on the company’s page anymore.
However, it’s not that effective. Reasons to block people are if they’re yelling, post
racist comments or trolls. You only block customers after warning them. It doesn’t
stop these people from spreading their message.
o Censoring: this means deleting specific messages. You can detect censorship on
company’s pages (previous comments not available anymore, page only contains
positive comments, organization publicly announces that it’ll delete comments).
Censoring comments might stop other people from posting as well.
o Responding: generally people are satisfied after a response. But it’s important to
know the complainant. Webcare can be seen as an invasion of privacy and not
everyone desires a response.
Responding: how will we respond, which tactics will we use, what tone of voice will we use?
Measuring: measuring the effects. Did it help?
2010: Vulcano eruption in Iceland. It was complicated to contact the airlines. People started
complaining and ask questions on social media. That was the first time KLM used social media as a
platform for webcare. They had one person working on social media, now a whole team.
Goals of webcare (Van Noort et al., 2014).
1. Customer care: helping customers by solving their problems and
answering their questions. It’s important to signal the problems
that customers have and that you solve them. If you don’t solve
them, they might share it on social media. They can transform
NeWOM to PeWOM.
2. Public relations: trying to stop the damage. Bystanders can also
form an opinion on the company. You can prevent NeWOM from
becoming a crisis.
3. Marketing and sales: companies can learn from the desires and needs from customers. With
that they can make improvements. They can also focus on creating a good or creative image.
Their messages could go viral, enhance brand evaluations and convince people to buy
something from the company.
Good, bad, and ugly complaints (Grégoire et al., 2015)
The positive side of social media represents opportunities:
1. When customers complain to the company online immediately after a first-service failure
2. When consumers publicize extraordinary recoveries
3
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