Discursive approaches to webcare: A closer look at apologies, conversational human voice, legitimation, and emotion regulation

Decock, Sofie

doi:10.1016/j.dcm.2021.100575

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Within the field of communication studies, this methodology is innovative: to date, corpus linguistics has not often been used to explore external business communication. This approach is in line with the recent tendency in the field of business communication (e.g., Decock, 2022) that wishes to promote the use of methodological tools from linguistics to address questions in professional (online) communication. The results of Lutzky's research are also of special interest to customer service managers, because they can help them identify which aspects of their webcare are in need of improvement.…”

Section: Contribution To Business Communication and Managerial Implic...supporting

confidence: 59%

“…For instance, the question of how to approach consumer feedback has been addressed by marketing and communications scholars. However, as Decock (2022) points out, these scholars tend to study such subjects without paying specific attention to the language in service encounters. They are primarily interested in the effects of managers’ responses on customer outcomes, drawing on attribution theory (Kelley, 1967) and on equity and justice theory (Orsingher et al, 2010).…”

Section: The Language Of Customer Feedback and Webcare From A Cross-d...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, the present Special Issue builds on a Special Issue entitled Recent trends in webcare: a closer look at discursive practices, edited by Sofie Decock, Bernard De Clerck, Geert Jacobs, and Rebecca Van Herck in the journal Discourse, Context and Media (2022). As Decock (2022) states in her introduction to this Special Issue, its main goal was to offer a linguistic-oriented approach to online service encounters. The present collection of articles expands on the 2022 Special Issue edited by Decock, De Clerck, Jacobs, and Van Herck, as it seeks to focus not only on the language of webcare, but also on the online discourse of customer (dis)satisfaction and its interactional dynamics with webcare.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Expressing and Responding to Customer (Dis)satisfaction Online: New Insights From Discourse and Linguistic Approaches

Ruytenbeek,

Decock

2023

International Journal of Business Communication

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In the current era of digitalization, customers are routinely invited to express their (dis)satisfaction with a product or a service and to provide recommendations for other prospective customers by writing reviews on a variety of online social media platforms. Such forms of electronic word-of-mouth have been found to strongly influence other consumers’ purchase decisions. In the case of negative reviews, the negativity expressed in a particular comment can spread to the whole community, which can damage a company’s reputation and profits. In an attempt to take consumer feedback into account, companies engage in “webcare.” This type of online service encounter has been defined by van Noort and Willemsen as “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).” Following-up on these developments, scholars have started to research the communicative strategies used by companies to address consumer feedback and those used by (dis)satisfied customers to voice their (dis)satisfaction from the perspective of discourse analysis and linguistic pragmatics, paying attention to their linguistic realizations and their interactional dynamics. The aim of this Special Issue is to further expand our knowledge on the discourse-pragmatic strategies used in the interaction of (dis)satisfied customers and companies online, and on how these different strategies influence other prospective customers’ perceptions, ultimately impacting their purchase decisions. In doing so, it positions itself at the crossroads of linguistics, communication, and business studies.

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Section: Contribution To Business Communication and Managerial Implic...supporting

confidence: 59%

Section: The Language Of Customer Feedback and Webcare From A Cross-d...mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Expressing and Responding to Customer (Dis)satisfaction Online: New Insights From Discourse and Linguistic Approaches

Ruytenbeek,

Decock

2023

International Journal of Business Communication

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“…Online consumer feedback has attracted the interest of researchers from various fields, such as marketing and communications scholars. However, as Decock (2022) points out, these scholars often approach messages from customers with-…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this article, we present an original study of the effects of the linguistic content of online customer negative (complaints) and positive (compliments) feedback on readers' identification of emotions and on their psychophysiological responses. More precisely, expanding on Ruytenbeek, Decock andDepraetere's (2023a, 2023b) findings for Twitter complaints in French, in this article, we explored the effects of the presence of evaluative language on the perception of Twitter messages in Dutch. Section 2 provides an overview of related work and Section 3 introduces the theoretical foundations and hypotheses underpinning our experimental study.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychophysiological effects of evaluative language use on Twitter complaints and compliments

Ruytenbeek

Allaert

Vanderhasselt

2023

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This article explores the role of evaluative language in the identification of emotions in–and psychophysiological responses to–Twitter complaints and compliments by the readers of these messages. Three hypotheses were tested in this research. First, in line with recent experimental work in French, we expected the presence of negative evaluative language in complaints to increase perceived dissatisfaction, impoliteness, and offensiveness by the reader. Second, assuming the negativity bias hypothesis, stronger psychophysiological responses should be found in complaints compared to compliments. Third, readers’ psychophysiological responses should be stronger for complaints and compliments including evaluative language. To test these hypotheses, we used a reading task involving cardiovascular reactivity measurements and a questionnaire. We found that perceived customer dissatisfaction, impoliteness and offensiveness were higher in complaints with vs. without evaluative language. We did not find an effect of the negativity bias on cardiovascular reactivity. Rather, compliments with evaluative language elicited larger cardiac slowing compared to complaints (with or without evaluative language) and compliments without evaluative language. As the stimuli is our study concern a railway company (which is mostly the target of criticism and complaints on Twitter), participants may have reacted more to the sort of feedback they would not expect the company to receive. Future research will be necessary to establish whether our findings still hold in the case of companies that achieve a better balance between negative and positive feedback.

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Book review

Ruytenbeek

2023

Journal of Pragmatics

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Discursive approaches to webcare: A closer look at apologies, conversational human voice, legitimation, and emotion regulation

Cited by 7 publications

References 38 publications

Expressing and Responding to Customer (Dis)satisfaction Online: New Insights From Discourse and Linguistic Approaches

Expressing and Responding to Customer (Dis)satisfaction Online: New Insights From Discourse and Linguistic Approaches

Psychophysiological effects of evaluative language use on Twitter complaints and compliments

Book review

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