Brands should make it easier for consumers to complain about marketing, says report

Brands should make it easier for consumers to complain about their one-to-one marketing, and even encourage them to do so, in a bid to earn greater consumer trust and increase marketing effectiveness, new research published today suggests.

The report, Bringing complaints in from the cold: exploring the role of complaints for the future of one-to-one marketing, indicates that although 65% of the UK public have had an issue with one-to-one marketing communications they received in the past year, just 16% have made a formal complaint.

According to the report’s author, Nick Chiarelli, director of Future Foundation, the findings should be a boon for brands and marketers to gain greater insight into increasing marketing effectiveness and increasing consumer trust.

“One-to-one marketing is highly effective at reaching consumers – sometimes too effective,” he said.

“Nine in 10 of the consumers we surveyed said that brands should make it easier for people to complain about their marketing. Brands have long understood the power of good complaints handling to build better relationships with their customers. People are now sharing their positive experiences with their social networks. To build greater consumer trust brands should encourage consumers to complain. This will certainly be of mutual benefit to brands and to consumers.”

Of the 55% of consumers who have never made a complaint, 34% said that this was because they “didn’t think that it would make any difference”, 30% said they didn’t know who to complain to, 19% said they didn’t know how to complain and 13% said they regarded the complaints process to be “too much hassle”.

Just 31% of people who have complained found the process to be “easy”. The report’s authors cite this as an opportunity for brands to benefit from consumer advocacy.