Ask anyone how much they enjoy phoning a contact centre, and their next move may be a swat in your direction. Ask them how that drawn-out issue with a service provider is going, and you may have to listen to a half-hour-long rant. On your social media accounts, you don’t even have to ask – customer gripes arrive all on their own.

Complaining about wretched customer service is nothing new. What is new is the amount of freedom and power customers wield to make unnecessary pain go away. They can move to other providers, armed with the recommendations of experts and friends available online and on social media platforms. Increasingly, they do just that, without bothering to understand what bits of your company’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) need fixing. They also tend to tell everyone they know, in more ways than ever before.