Managing e-NWOM: Webcare as Online Reputation Management An Experimental Study Examining the Effects of the Communication Style used in Webcare, the Context of the Message and the Role of Engagement on the Perceived Reputation Esmee Roetman 10533370 Master’s Thesis Graduate School of Communication Master’s programme Corporate Communication dr. S.C. (Suzanne) de Bakker 20/06/2017 Abstract Nowadays, every stakeholder can voice its opinion on social media. Opinions and issues voiced on social media are accessible for a large public and can therefore improve or seriously harm the reputation of an organization. That is why many organizations have a webcare team responding to the complaints of stakeholders. Webcare serves as a tool in support of customer relationship, reputation and brand management. This research attempted to fill the gap by examining to what extent the communication style used in webcare (conversational human voice vs. corporate voice) and the context in which a webcare response was posted (single comment vs. multiple comments), predicts the perceived reputation. Besides, engagement was added as a possible moderator in the relationship between the communication style and the perceived reputation. These relationships were investigated by conducting an online experimental survey among 169 participants. In this study, a fictional Facebook message from KLM – Royal Dutch Airlines was chosen. This study only found a statistically significant effect of the communication style on the perceived reputation. The results indicate that the perceived reputation is more positive when KLM uses a conversational human voice in webcare than a corporate voice. There were no statistically significant effects found for the context in which a webcare response was posted and engagement did not moderate the relationship. Therefore, future research should examine other organizations and organizations in different sectors. Besides that, given the dialogical nature of a conversational human voice, a conversation does not end at one single webcare response, so researchers should further investigate such dialogues. 2 Introduction New technologies like social media make it possible for organizations to communicate directly with their stakeholders (Valentini, 2015). Social media are an element of the communication mix that organizations need to deal with and that have grown in importance in the communication mix of European organizations (Verhoeven, Tench, Zerfass, Moreno & Verčič, 2012). The introduction of it has dramatically impacted and transformed day-to-day activities of public relations practitioners (Moreno, Navarro, Tench & Zerfass, 2015). There are numerous advantages and opportunities that social media have to offer. As an example, they enable a more symmetrical and two-way communication between the organization and their publics and these are seen as essential to building mutually beneficial relationships (Valentini, 2015). However, there are also definitely some drawbacks attached to it. Through social media, every stakeholder can voice its opinion. This offers some serious threats for organizations, as it can even harm their reputation (Verhoeven et al., 2012). Issues voiced on social media by different stakeholders are accessible for a large public and can therefore cause serious damage to an organization. A well-known example is that of a complaint by a famous Dutch comedian, Youp van ‘t Hek, about the negative experiences his son had with the telecommunications provider T-Mobile. Youp van ‘t Hek reported negative sentiments regarding T-Mobile’s customer service on his Twitter account when his son got a problem with his contract. He was certainly not happy with the fact that the company apologized via Twitter. As a consequence, Youp van ‘t Hek used his Twitter account to report even more negative sentiments regarding T-Mobile and he invited other consumers to do so as well. This created a vicious circle of electronic negative word of mouth (e-NWOM) and eventually reputational damage for the telecommunications provider T- Mobile (Van Noort & Willemsen, 2011). This example shows how relevant it is for organizations to respond in a right way on social media. Social media are uncontrolled areas 3 for participation which may pose a serious risk of reputation damage for organizations. Social media, in comparison to traditional media, have a great potential to make the public relations profession more strategic, two-way, interactive, symmetrical or dialogical (Grunig, 2009). Increasingly, stakeholders want to engage with organizations on social media. That is why many organizations now have a webcare team. Webcare can be seen as a tool for online reputation management. It is an example of communications that organizations use to respond to online complaints and other (negative) messages from stakeholders. Through webcare, organizations try to protect the organization’s reputation and prevent reputational damage. Webcare can be defined as follows: “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). Webcare is performed by one or more company representatives (i.e., webcare teams) and serves as a tool in support of customer relationship, reputation and brand management” (Van Noort & Willemsen, 2011, p. 3). Previous research (Van Noort, Willemsen, Kerkhof & Verhoeven, 2015) has already shown that a webcare response provided by an organization is more effective than no webcare response. More specifically, when corporate feedback to a complaint is provided, this positively influences the relationship between the organization and the public (Van Noort et al., 2015). Besides, consumers are more satisfied when an organization posted a response in reply to a negative comment than when a response was lacking (Van Noort et al., 2015). Thus, consumers appreciate it more when organizations respond to questions or comments than when they do not respond (Schultz, Utz & Göritz, 2011). Previous research has also shown that not only the webcare strategy (reactive vs. proactive) used is important for an organization when they engage with their stakeholders, also the used communication style is an essential part. Prior research (Van Noort & Willemsen, 2011) showed that a company is evaluated more positively when the webcare 4 strategy is reactive in response to NWOM instead of proactive. The effect appeared to be mediated by a communication style, namely the use of a conversational human voice versus a corporate voice. Such a voice reflects attributes as being open to dialog, treat others as human and show empathy (Van Noort et al., 2015). A conversational human voice also appeared to be a mediating factor in the study of Dijkmans, Kerkhof, Buyukcan-Tetik and Beukeboom (2015). Based on survey research, the authors demonstrated a positive reputational effect of a consumers’ exposure to a company’s social media activities and the mediating role of a conversational human voice in this relation. Furthermore, Schamari and Schaefers (2015) revealed that webcare can be used to increase consumer engagement on consumer-generated platforms and this effect is explained by consumers’ perceptions of a brand’s conversational communication style. Thus, there is some correlational as well as experimental evidence for the positive outcomes of a conversational human voice: the more an organization is perceived as using a conversational style communication, the more the organization is able to foster trust, commitment, satisfaction and control mutuality (Kelleher & Miller, 2006). Still, there is not much research yet on how different communication styles (conversational human voice vs. corporate voice) affect the reputation of the organization and to what extent the context in which a webcare response is posted (single comment vs. multiple comments) affects the reputation. The studies discussed earlier usually examine the effects of a webcare response in reply to a single negative comment of a customer. However, in reality, it is possible that negative comments are sometimes posted adjacent to or in response to other negative comments (Van Noort et al., 2015). It is highly relevant for organizations to know whether there are differences in the effectiveness of webcare with regard to the amount of e- NWOM messages. Besides this, it is still unclear to what extent the organization’s history with a customer influences the effectiveness of webcare. The effectiveness of a response might differ for 5 consumers who do or do not have a strong relationship with the organization (Van Noort et al., 2015). Being interested in an organization, having positive feelings about it and thus feeling more engaged can strengthen feelings of injustice when organizations fail to solve the problem in a satisfying way (Van Noort et al., 2015). That is why in this study, the level of engagement will also be taken into account because it is important that an organization is attentive to who it is dealing with. Therefore, this study fills these gaps. This study examines and adds to the literature other factors that have not been examined before and which might have an influence on and determine the reputation of an organization. This research thus gives a broader and more complete perspective of webcare in organizations and that is why it is an addition to scientific literature. It is investigated to what extent the communication style used (conversational human voice vs.