Companies that Want to Make Us Mad

9/21/2019

by Keith Quesenberry, Associate Professor of Marketing, Messiah College

Some people have a real knack for ‘pushing our buttons.’ They’re good at taking us to the point of frustration, then backing off just before we unravel. Now some companies are perfecting this tactic with the help of data analytics.

A friend recently shared with me his exasperation in dealing with one of the big Internet-TV-phone providers. For many months, his home Wi-Fi was having significant problems, which the provider finally sent a technician to fix, but only after many futile and often infuriating phone calls.

When the contract ended, my friend considered all his options, including giving the current provider a chance to keep his business. After several more frustrating phone calls, however, the best the provider would offer was a price about $20/month higher than he had been paying and than “new customers” could get.

So, he cancelled his account and switched to another company. Only then did the original provider call him with a competitive price and a plea, “Please come back to us,” but it was too late.

Unfortunately for it, the company passed the point of no return. Some other firms, however, have found how to step right up to that loss line without crossing it. Their secret is ‘big data.’

According to a recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article, certain companies now use data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to determine “how far a customer can be pushed until their heads explode.” The practice gauges how angry a customer can get right before they leave a business, then uses that knowledge to guide customer service and other marketing practices.

At first glance, such tactics may seem questionable, but could it be that these companies are on to something and consumers just need to consider ‘the bigger picture,’ beyond their immediate ire? Although these organizations might minimize customer support, maybe the cost savings and efficiencies they find will lead to lower prices or benefit customers in other ways.

Some question the ethics of AI, particularly whether it will take people’s jobs, but AI used properly can improve marketers’ performance and better serve customers. “How AI Can Improve Your Job Not Steal It” highlights these benefits, including the automation of time-consuming manual processes. Marketers also can use AI for data analysis, personalization, optimization, testing, digital asset management, automated campaigns and offers, content creation, and programmatic ad buying.

“How AT&T Uses Machine Learning to Better Serve Customers” describes how the communication giant uses AI in customer service to make predictions and provide intelligence to managers in near real-time that helps them answer questions like: “Were my customers happy or not?” “If I put them on hold did that make them unhappy?” and “Did my agent solve their problem the first time?”

In a recent post on AT&T’s technology blog, the firm explains how it’s using AI to improve experiences for customers, such as by building 5G, optimizing network traffic and speed, fighting robocalls, and making sure technicians arrive on time. AT&T adds that it uses AI to personalize customer interactions and “to enable friction-free, always available, customer powered problem-solving solutions.”

But, do systems that push consumers to the brink of breakdown solve problems or create them? In those tenuous cases, AT&T’s customers probably aren’t experiencing the standards set out in the firm’s AI Guiding Principles, which suggest that the technology should be: 1) By people, for people, 2) Accessible and shared, and 3) Secure and ethical.

These new analytics systems track things such as how long a customer will wait for a human to answer the phone and how many ads they will listen to before hanging up. AI can analyze behavior, personalities and tone of voice to determine what each person will tolerate. One expert, Mark Shaefer, author of Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins, calls this use of AI “the worst marketing tactic ever.”

The WSJ shares a story similar to the unfortunate personal experience mentioned above. An AT&T customer had to make six calls and spend four hours on the phone to get the company to change her plan. Only when she asked to have her number transferred to Verizon did AT&T honor her original request.

So, what’s the bottom-line? Data analytics and AI certainly can make customer service more efficient and effective, which should mean better company performance and increased income that can benefit both shareholders and employees.

However, even if a company can ‘get away with it,’ using these tools to push people to anger isn’t strong support for societal values like fairness and respect. There’s enough anger in the world and angst in people’s lives. We don’t need companies intentionally adding more.

It’s great that more organizations are leveraging the latest technological trends to help power customer service, but using those tools to manage human emotions and manipulate people to madness should be seen as “Single-Minded Marketing.”

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32 Comments

Nick Shover

9/24/2019 03:11:36 pm

This post was very interesting to me. I have never thought of companies purposefully creating anger in a consumer. When I think about customer service, I think it is always the goal to keep your customer smiling and in good spirits. In my mind this translates to better relationships between consumer and business and can also lead to a larger bottom line. I have always assumed that if a consumer is upset with a business, then that is a negative outcome for the institution. It is very interesting that it has become a goal of some organizations to push this new idea. I agree that it is very single minded in the sense that it is not looking out for the consumer. This tactic may lead to better revenues for businesses, but the fact that customers are dissatisfied in the process is definitely not positive.

Matthew Simmons

9/24/2019 05:18:30 pm

This tactic that companies use is not ethical. The whole point of business is to satisfy the customer's needs. The customer should always be put first, not the company. By trying to push the limit on how far the customer will go, you are not having a customer-first mentality. People's lives are stressful enough between their job, their relationships, and their finances. It is not right to try to make them angry in their already stressful life. Instead, they should survey their customers to find out their preferences a different way. There are other ways to collect information. This method is single-minded. If the company focuses on pleasing every customer, even if it means making sacrifices now, it'll pay off in the end.

Madi Moyer

9/24/2019 06:30:56 pm

This was a different and interesting perspective that I've never thought about before in terms of marketing strategy. While pushing customers to anger may sometimes work to retain business, it seems to go against the very thing that marketing is – a mutually valuable exchange between organizations and consumers. If companies are inducing anger in their markets, are the exchanges made truly valuable for both sides? Maybe for the business, but not so much for the consumer who, like the friend mentioned in this article, may have took part in many frustrating phone calls before their issue was close to resolved. This tactic is definitely single minded and companies should not be so quick to use the newest technological tools, especially in cases like this, where consumers are being taken advantage of simply because they have emotions.

Clayton Roberts

9/24/2019 08:13:16 pm

I do not believe what the companies are doing to anger the customers is ethical but it is smart. From a business standpoint, your main goal is to make profit. This AI is simply pushing people to get the most amount of profit from the customers it can. It is a single minded approach, since it creates stakeholder value but isn't ethical. I believe that angering the customers isn't a good idea since it can lead to bad reviews on websites or between conversations with friends. Most business's have competition that can easily exploit bad reviews through things like ads.

Mitchell Martin

9/24/2019 08:25:11 pm

This post is interesting. A guys calls the company many times to get his internet fixed. Then the guys plan runs out and he decides he doesn't want to deal with that company anymore so he goes to someone else. He goes to someone that charges less. Then his old company calls him back and offers him and price and a plea to come back. Well if the company wanted him to stay with them then they should of answered his phone calls and fixed his problems earlier. This strategy is single minded. They company was not keeping the customer happy.

Shae Stoltzfus

9/24/2019 08:35:56 pm

This was an interesting and confusing post to me. I understand that the company's goal it to make as much profit as possible, but I feel that there are much better ways than pushing their customers to their breaking point. However I feel that the most important focus in marketing should be customer satisfaction, there are so many major competitors that will be willing to take new business. If a company will wait to respond to their customers until they talk about leaving and choosing another company, if I was a consumer I would feel such a frustration and that would create an incentive to leave. This is very unethical, and could potentially really hurt companies from reviews and word of mouth of the consumers horrible experience. Companies could be using their time and resources for better that could impact them for the better in the future.

Will Mills

9/24/2019 09:05:06 pm

At first glance, the idea using AI to nearly drive customers to the breaking point can seem counter-intuitive, but in theory, it can work surprisingly well. Many people lack the time and patience to deal with seemingly endless wait times, and some of them would rather endure the initial problem instead of dealing with customer service. However, for the iron-willed customer who carries on, the company is not only going to lose the customer and their money, but their brand name will be tarnished as well. It’s also likely that the disgruntled customer will tell others about what the company did--now there are even more people who have disdain towards the company. As a marketing strategy, the usage of AI and Data Analytics to push people to the edge is very single-minded. People already deal with enough stress and are short on time, and having to deal with the tedious process of getting through customer service doesn’t make the customer feel any better. The company would be much better off using its resources elsewhere, in ways that would be mindful.

Pathomkarn Boonpienpol (Gene)

9/25/2019 01:11:35 pm

I believe that what these companies are doing to their customers is unethical. While I believe is unethical, the companies are smart if you look from a business point of view. As businesses, the goal is to gain profit. The AI can work more efficiently that people and could save resources like cash that owners have to pay for workers. However, it is still unethical as the company's goal is to put customers as their priority. It is pretty single minded. While AI could generate more profit for the company than people, it could also make customers unsatisfied with the services the company is offering. If customer are unsatisfied, they could disregard the brand and pass on negative reviews about the company to other people. As a result, companies could also lose customers, meaning that they will get lesser revenues as well.

Jess Davis

9/25/2019 03:44:14 pm

This was a new idea to me - I never thought that making customers mad could be a market strategy. This blog comments on the fact that some companies gauge how angry customers get right before they leave a company, and then the companies use this information to guide their customer service and other marketing practices. I agree that this strategy is not ethical. Companies should not aim to be just good enough to make some profit; rather they should strive to be the best in their domains. While it might be a hard and time consuming process, striving to be the best will ultimately help businesses in the long term. In addition, I believe that this approach of getting the customer mad will create negative word of mouth about the company. Even though the company may not lose the initial customer, this customer's negative comments may decrease the amount of future customers the company will get.

Brithney Gonzalez

9/25/2019 05:45:08 pm

This blog was very interesting. I can totally relate to the frustration and anger that the customers in this blog experienced from companies. I also agree with Mark Shaefer when he calls this use of AI “the worst marketing tactic ever.” If companies continue to do this to their customers, especially their loyal customers, they will loose them for good. There is just so much that people will continue to put up with. I understand that the company's goal is to make profit, however, I do do agree with this approach that they are taking to achieve their goal.

Brithney Gonzalez

9/25/2019 08:58:10 pm

Correction: I do NOT agree with this approach that they are taking to achieve their goal.

Nathan King

9/25/2019 08:01:10 pm

Upsetting customers instead of doing everything to retain them and keep them happy seems counter intuitive. I definitely agree that this is a single minded marketing strategy, but I am also not surprised by it. Companies are continuing to take advantage of the technology we use and better market themselves as a result. I read that a couple years ago some companies started putting noises in commercials that humans cannot hear, but phones pick up on, and they used that to target their adds to consumers phones as well as their televisions. Many of these corporations will do anything to make a quick buck, even if that is a hassle and inconvenience to us.

Rebekah McClelland

9/25/2019 09:18:18 pm

The part of me that is taking this marketing class and learning things understands that this is a single minded approach, and maybe not the best way to do things when it comes to marketing. However, the computer science major in me thinks that this is a really cool concept and wants to learn more about the algorithms that these companies use to gather their data and how they're sorted. Does the AI gather data on tone of voice, vocabulary, frequency of phone calls? How many customers did these companies have to lose before their algorithms collected and analyzed enough data that their results held some validity ? I'm also wondering how these companies determined that this method was better than actually offering a decent price/service. It seems like a lot of extra work was put into simply finding a way to cheat some people out of a nickel, and their sanity.

Dakota Kelso

9/25/2019 09:25:49 pm

Artificial intelligence definitely has its pros and cons. Contrary to what many think, and I used to think, technological improvements do not equal a society that is becoming worse off. There has been so much good come out of technology with relatively few negative outcomes comparatively. That being said, I think the way a company utilizes technology says a lot about their ethics, morals, and all around business techniques. If a company is continually utilizing technology, such as AI, to push me over the edge I am more inclined to not do business with that organization.

Thomas Murray

9/25/2019 10:05:18 pm

After reading this post it is clear this tactic is single minded. Angering customers by using AI certainly doesn't uphold societal values however it is effective. Companies are profit driven and are always looking to get ahead of the competition. Using AI and gathering data is an easy way for companies to stay ahead of the curve. As a consumer myself I would be upset if I found out a company was tracking my moves. However, as long as a company makes a profit by using a certain tactic they won't change their ways even if it harms their relationship with their customers.

Alana Gould

9/25/2019 10:27:03 pm

I think this article was incredibly interesting to read and never really thought about making the consumers angry as a marketing tactic. Now, that being said I think this tactic is unethical and does not really think for the consumers. We as marketers need to understand that we need to satisfy our costumers needs and wants. Does making them angry do the best job to make the consumers happy? probably not, unless they have a weird buying fetish where they like getting yelled at. But realistically that's a small percentage of people. I definitely think what they are trying to market is single-minded. Like Quesenberry said we already have enough anger in this world and creating more doesn't do us any good rather more harm. Manipulatig your consumers by making them mad is totally infuriating. Now making more money for the company as a business perspective, yeah it makes great money for them but it doesn't mean the costumer satisfaction is 100% happy. There are different ways to be ethical, you could have them take surveys, or have them fill out an online rating. There are better ways to market and get feed back.

Lindsey Bernd

9/25/2019 10:44:29 pm

This post, about data analysis and artificial intelligence (AI) used to anger a customer to the point of breaking, was, at the least, a thought provoking read. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly popular within businesses in our society, we can clearly see the benefits such as better service to customers, improved marketers’ performance as well as personalization, automated campaigns, and digital asset management. Yes, all of these parts from artificial intelligence are assets to the business, but where does artificial intelligence become unethical in the company. After reading this post, I believe that companies need to be aware of how AI helps the company and when is become an unethical component. Companies should, of course, look how they can make some profit, but it should not come at the expense of a customer’s dissatisfaction. Marketing is both the company as well as the customer and this marketing tactic neglects the needs and emotions of the customer. I believe that companies should put the time and effort into customer satisfaction because, in the long run, they will gain loyal customers. By using AI to manage and manipulate human emotions, the business is no longer personal. This is undoubtedly single minded marketing as it neglects societal value at the same time as creating stakeholder value.

Austin Donat

9/25/2019 10:48:03 pm

While this approach to marketing can be incredibly frustrating for the end consumer, I understand why companies choose to do this. The longer any customer spends interacting with a given company, the less time they will spend looking into any other company, as the time they could spend shopping elsewhere is eaten up by the original company.

Additionally, companies who strive to “make us mad” in their interactions can get away with maintaining a higher profit margin. If somebody goes into a call with Company X and is expecting to maintain their current payments or get a reduced payment due to poor service, and Company X instead tells them that the cheapest possible plan is more expensive than the consumer’s original plan, obviously that is frustrating to the consumer. If the customer relents, then Company X is making more money than they previously were. If the consumer does not relent, and Company X plays its cards right, then they can potentially work the customer down to the point where they will accept the expense that they were used to paying. In this scenario, the company does not gain anything in particular, but they also do not lose a customer.

Company X gains all of this for some of their employee’s time, but their employee was already going to be there. The only way the company truly loses when playing this type of game with their customers is if many of those customers get totally fed up and leave the company for a competitor. But the number of customers that need to leave in order to hurt the company is substantial.
Say Company X decides to raise their price by 10% more a month. They start to lose money comparatively to previous years when 10% of their customers leave for some other company. It’s not a game with massive room for error, but if Company X is good at it, they stand to make money. Since most companies (including non-profits) need money in order to stay in business (paying rent, wages, utilities, etc.); making more money is something that is hard to turn down. This is especially true when the potential downside is limited.

Ultimately, companies need money, and customer happiness is just a convenient bonus when it occurs. If companies exist in a monopoly or oligopoly, then there is no incentive for companies to ensure customer happiness and can focus on what truly matters to them – making money in order to continue funding for operations, expanding into new territory, and/or increasing profit for shareholders.

I know this is a very bleak outlook for what this blog post entailed, and without going into the ramifications of using Artificial Intelligence for marketing, but I believe that I covered one of the fundamental reasons companies care about marketing: its ability to help the company turn a profit. Obviously, this is not a company’s sole reason for caring about marketing, but it is definitely one of the main reasons for their caring.

Sara Chimariya

9/25/2019 10:53:21 pm

This is definitely a single-minded marketing strategy because it creates value for its shareholder when the company gains profit. But it is quite interesting how the company use AI to collect the data unethically. The process that this company use to get the customer mad is not a good idea for a company to grow. Using AI and analytics to automate the business processes and reduce the time is good for the company in the long run but they might lose their loyal customers. It is not always the profit that the company should look for but also address the ethical issues or concerns that arise from the customer's point of view. The company should put customers first and work on getting customers satisfaction whereas the company is playing with the customer's emotions.

Nathan Ncube

9/25/2019 11:19:44 pm

I am in favor with data analysis and artificial intelligence because they actually try to make things better for the customers even though its not the best way ever to make your customers happy. I would have never thought that companies intentionally get people mad so they can try "solving" what ever problem they have. Hopefully in the coming years there would be a better way to test these things because some people do not have the patience of waiting that long for their "tests". That being said these testings are basically reflecting the companies ethics. If these tests are coming up with results that are making companies grow and customer service improve then it is a good strategy, not everything thats a good result comes from a smooth path.

Olivia Shields

9/25/2019 11:28:01 pm

I understand the idea behind using Artificial Intelligence results as a marketing strategy, but I feel it is often used more negatively than in a positive way to help various companies future interactions with consumers. This article was insightful to the fact that Artificial Intelligence actually does provide information to the company that is vital for its success in the future, however I believe it is extremely unethical for these companies to be be pushing their customers limits when it comes to buying certain products or services. That information should not be used to see how much customers will pay for something. Even though the success of a company is important, at what point tips the ethical scale? In the specific case presented in this article, I believe the company pushed the consumers limits too far financially and emotionally. If companies use Artificial Intelligence, they walk a fine line of satisfying their needs as well as the consumer’s needs. Although creating stakeholder value, he single-minded approach could easily shift to a mindful approach by being more aware of the consumer.

Rachel Switzer

9/26/2019 01:43:36 am

After reading this article, I'd like to suggest that the 'push customer to their limits' tactic might not create stakeholder value at all, demoting it from single-minded to mindless. I agree with Professor Quesenberry that it isn't ethical to use technology to study how far people's patience can be stretched and then use that for the company's advantage. But my first impression of the topic is to go even farther and suggest that a customer who waits through "six calls and four hours" isn't going to be a customer whose asset potential to the company is reached. The company will have a better brand and reputation if customer service, rather than efficiency, is prioritized. In the short run, these AI formulas for waiting out a customer as long as possible might make company efforts lighter, but in the long run, these customers lose loyalty and faith in the company; this loyalty, termed 'goodwill', is an important intangible asset to a business. Word of mouth is one of the more effective ways to increase a company's likability and secure its positioning in a target market. But if the word on the street is full of complaints about long waiting time, bad communication, and confusing step-by-step automated processes, it will not create stockholder value for the company in the long run. I understand the popularity to garner all that AI has to offer, but I think that in this situation, this is not the best move, for company’s sake as well as the customers’.

Missy Martin

9/26/2019 10:54:49 am

This idea of pushing customers until they are frustrated is something I had never thought of or heard of before. I personally believe this marketing strategy is unethical. It should not be the goal of a company to push their customers to their breaking point just to get information in order to shape their other marketing strategies. I feel like doing this will end up creating a bad reputation for the company and in return hurting their sales. Word of mouth can be really great for growing a company or can be extremely harmful to a company if you anger a customer. So, through this you are not only losing that initial customer but also others they are close to who they will share their bad experience with.

Chunjie Shan

9/26/2019 11:37:48 am

These companies are using a way that is taking customers to be frustrated, then before customers unravel, they backed off. I didn’t hear this marketing strategy before. I think this kind of strategy is useful but is not ethical. Companies that use big data to judge whether customers like their products and do so through Artificial Intelligence are smart, but companies need to start with a good service attitude. If a marketing strategy that has been merely touching the customer's bottom line gets more focus, it destroys a company's marketing principles. For example, AT&T's mobile phone company mentioned in the article will only make customers choose other similar companies if it brings bad feelings to customers. Customers will choose a better service experience to make themselves happier than a bad service attitude or preferential products.

Jordan Garrison

9/26/2019 11:39:12 am

Before taking this class I had never heard of or realized companies actually trying to make their customers mad. I think this goes against everything marketing was created for. Whenever someone thinks of marketing or sees some form of marketing it's supposed to make them feel some type of way. But purposely angering customers gives companies a bad reputation. Word of mouth and people complaining about the company will make other potential customers shy away from buying their products or services. Personally, whenever I see an unsatisfied customer, especially an angry one, this doesn't make me feel like I should pay to get angry about something when I can find another company that doesn't try to do that. In the end I believe this marketing tactic will die down because people will get sick of being angered on purpose. No-one likes to be angry, definitely not when buying a companies product or service.

Schylar Turpel

10/30/2019 10:13:03 pm

This post actually blows my mind. I have always been tentative on technology; not only in what it is capable of doing but in how it allows humans to manipulate it as well as others. The idea of spending millions of dollars on big data research to find out how bad of a company you can be before it hurts you is insane. Companies should be seeking to create life long customer value so that people will actually desire to return or stay with a particular brand. Creating lasting relationships with satisfied customers not only keeps them around, but also allows them to create buzz marketing by sharing their experiences with others. They should be spending money on how they can improve their customer service and responses to gain and keep customers, not how crummy of a business they can be before someone leaves. Is this really what our consumption driven world has come to?

Taylor Clark

11/2/2019 05:59:54 pm

When organizations push their consumers to the brink and leave them with a bad taste in their mouths, it should raise alarms for the agency's marketing departments. Even if they have found the sweet spot where consumers can be pushed to the limit without being pushed past it, is it worth it when the same consumer will always think badly of the company? Even if they are not leaving the company and remain a lifetime customer, will they ever recommend it to others if they've had bad experiences? These and other similar questions should be taken into consideration when companies choose approaches like this one.

Marcos Mazariegos

11/3/2019 05:29:51 pm

I enjoyed reading this article because it addresses a different side to marketing and customer relationships. While many companies and studies focus on positive experiences, good customer satisfaction, and overall healthy relationships between provider and consumer, we rarely hear about how customer frustration and negative experience impact the marketing and communication a company should communicate. I find it so interesting that data and statistics can be used to emotionally and psychologically influence consumers in a variety of ways.

Jayleann

11/8/2019 02:30:13 am

Wow. This post made me a little upset to be honest! I think it's ridiculous how companies actually utilize data to see how far they can push a customer to anger and frustration. I would agree with the author that this form of data analysis is definitely unethical! I too have also had bad experiences with companies such as AT&T, so it does upset me that this can be their tactic with their customers. I feel like data analysis can and should be used to better your companies services and goods, and should not be used to see how mad you can get customers and how this can benefit profit margins.

Will Prichard

11/8/2019 09:40:44 pm

I found this post to be very disturbing. I have never heard of companies and customer service trying to disappoint and anger their customers. Usually, I think that customer service is trying to help and serve not the opposite. I find this so frustrating that a company would sacrifice the customer's satisfaction and happiness just so they have better profits. I find this unethical, a company or service should provide their service and make it easy for the customer I find doing anything else is just silly if your business isn't helping anyone what's the point of doing business. in my opinion I think this kind of marketing and this strategy should be outlawed or revised because I wouldn't want this to happen to anyone.

Joel Kim

10/27/2020 02:14:05 am

This article was very interesting to me because I have never really thought about companies intentionally making their customers dissatisfied. They do not care about their customers and only their gain. Not very moral and does not seem right.

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4/20/2021 02:33:14 am

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Companies that Want to Make Us Mad

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