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Forty-three percent of Americans have publicly voiced their displeasure about their most serious product and service problem, up from 35 percent in 2015, according to the 2023 National Customer Rage Survey.
The survey of 1,000 U.S. adults from Customer Care Measurement & Consulting (CCMC) in collaboration with Arizona State University, found nine percent had taken action to settle a score against a company through measures such as pestering or public shaming in person or online, up from only three percent in 2020.
Seventy-four percent had experienced a product or service problem in the past year, more than doubling since 1976.
One reason for the rise in angry outbursts is that “customer uncivility is on the rise.” While half of respondents view less aggressive forms of behavior (i.e., yelling, ranting, arguing, giving ultimatums, and social media character assassination) as uncivil, the other half view these behaviors as either “civil” or say that it “depends on the circumstances.”
CCMC said in its release, “The social contract about the norms for individually protesting against businesses’ belief systems and values appears to be in flux.”
A second reason was human customer service reps being increasingly replaced by FAQs and chatbots. Top frustrations stemming from this included “being forced to listen to long messages before you’re permitted to speak to a representative” and “figuring out how or where to contact the company.”
A poll conducted for The Wall Street Journal late last year found that about half of respondents had searched a company’s website “extensively” for a phone number in the last year, with 41 percent saying no number was available.
Finally, the CCMC study noted that the ease of online outreach makes complaining easier. Social media was found to have unseated the telephone as the primary complaint channel at 50 percent, increasing from five percent in 2013. Thirty-two percent of complainants posted information about their most serious problem on social media — more than double those who posted in 2020.
“Most people now are using a computer, they’re using some form of social media at this point, there’s a democratization of complaining,” CCMC CEO Scott Broetzmann recently told the Journal.