“Friendly” Complaining Behaviors: Toward a Relational Approach

The relational approach is often presented as a strategy to retain customers, but it may also be an appropriate approach to encourage customers to complain, as a review of literature shows. Using information contained in complaints and giving the right answers (distributive, procedural and interactional) to such complaints is essential. Relational marketing may also be used to induce customers (but not all of them) to complain about the attributes of certain products/services. This article focuses on these issues and should stimulate further research in this new field.