Qualitative Analysis about Consumer Complaint Response through Reader's Letter Column in Kompas.com

The purpose of this qualitative study is to describe and present consumer complaint responses through the Reader s Letter column in Kompas.com. In collecting the data, the researcher uses secondary data from documentation of complaints taken from the online version of Reader s Letters of Kompas daily newspaper (http://www1.kompas.com/suratpembaca or Kompas.com). A total of 168 complaint letters were analyzed during the period December 2011 to April 2012. Results showed that 85% contain negative words toward the companies (disappointed, frustrated, failed to satisfy customer, feeling trapped and robbed, etc) as reasons to complain through the Reader s Letter column of Kompas.com. Based on this study, companies in Indonesia seem not to place importance on responding to consumer complaints as less than 2% of companies were eager to reply to the complaints in the same column of Reader s Letter, and only 6% of complaints were resolved based on the sample data. This paper aims to identify and suggest practical company solutions directly applicable to service management.