Wacktrap Makes Customer Complaints Social
Customers now have a new way to tackle the problem of companies refusing to answer consumer complaints. Wacktrap is the first social network built around sharing and exchanging complaints and life experiences, meaning consumers in any industry can now share and find resolutions to problems with businesses. For the first time, Wacktrap.com is making complaints social.
Wacktrap co-founders Shannon Miller and Suzanne Ziesche know customer service. The female entrepreneurs from southern California have been featured in Newsweek and books related to their business expertise. It's their newest technology venture that has people literally talking about companies.
The social network does much more than provide a shortcut to long waits, phone hold times, and mixed or confusing customer service responses provided by businesses. "Many customers have felt like expressing a complaint online is like dropping that experience into a black hole," says Ziesche. "Often those words are never seen or heard again."
"As important as finally making complaints social, we're making complaints actually findable," says Miller. "That's never been done." Wacktrap users are able to drill down to a narrow, specific brand and skip through thousands of categories quickly via dropdown. In a category like travel, customers can view complaints related to travel, the narrowed area air travel, or even by a specific airline brand."
The founders believe the current method of waiting or depending on the company itself to respond, an event which often never occurs, has turned the customer into a middleman. "The rise of social media means customers don't need to be caught in the middle or waiting for a response that may never come. No one knows more about a company, its problems, or how to fix them, than its customers," says Miller. "There simply hasn't been the right space for sharing and effectively connecting people who can help each other find that fix."
"Experience is the most powerful tie between humans. It's the reason we have friends," says Ziesche, "and the reason we turn to them first for answers."