“Put it on a post-card and send it to last week…”

…may have been some people’s experience of customer service. But according to a survey done by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), more and more customers are voicing their complaints through “social media”.

One third of the customers who were surveyed said that they dealt with bad service, by writing a bad review on the company’s website.

When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. The process of making a customer complaint gives rise to a highly confrontational situation. Not only are you making a criticism of that company TO a company rep, you’re also voicing anger or dissatisfaction to a person who you’ve never met before. I’m not surprised that it may make a fair few people feel uncomfortable or nervous.

Doing it via the internet takes away the conflict element of the complaints procedure. The outcome may also be less personalized, and therefore less satisfactory, but it gives shy customers a way in.

What are the implications of this for social media and the news? Well, I think that shows us a key point about the psychology of the internet, useful for news-gathering. The relative anonymity of social media means that nervous people may be more willing to speak up, or get in touch to talk about an issue, if first contact is made online. For news-gathering, this provides a new way of getting good interviewees to come forward, when they may have otherwise felt a little startled by being phoned up or approached in person.

Lydia