Klantenservice (Customer Service)

Overview

In the beginning of July 2015 a Dutch Facebook group^[1] called “Klantenservice” (Customer Service) was created. It was not created to help out people but rather to troll them on the messages they leave on Facebook targeted towards companies whom they are dissatisfied with. The victims believe sometimes the Customer Service account is genuine and respond to the trolling. Companies that have fallen victim to the facebook account include Vodafone, IKEA, Burger King, supermarkets and other shops. It is based around the British facebook group Customer Service.^[6]

The motto of the group is “We cannot make it more helpful, only a lot easier”, which is based on the motto from the tax authorities, which is “We cannot make it more pleasant, only a lot easier”.

The facebook group went viral after the media discovered the group, going up from 11K likes in the middle, 77K on the 21st of July^[4] and at the end of July to 136K likes. ^[3]

Company Responses

Responses from the companies that have fallen victim to the troll account have been mostly negative^[5]. It caused Burger King to shut down its page for complaints ^[9], supermarket Albert Heijn deleting its posts and providing a statement afterwards condeming the page ^[9] and Ziggo stating it wants nothing to do with people pretending to be ’’funny’’.

The exceptions come from Specsaver (which sells glasses), Gamma (sells tools and work supplies) and Scapino (sells clothing) who could see the humor in it^[7]. Specsavers even stated that “Fun that it is now our turn to fall ‘victim’ to the customer service”.

Threatened lawsuit

On July the 21st, the theme park Efteling told the newspaper Algemeen Dagblad that it is considering a lawsuit against the Facebook group.^[4]^[5] This was done after a customer under the name Hennie posted a complaint on the Efteling facebook page. He was mad because an employee would have called him a retard while he was waiting to get into a ride. The ‘Customer Service’ then told Hennie that they saw no problem with that. “You act like a retard, so as we see the situation the employee acted correctly.”

The post got more than 20.000 likes and was shared hundreds of times. Hennie did not understand that the actual Efteling wasn’t the sender and acted hostile. “I’m not a retard, where did you get the guts to say that”, after which he tagged his friends in the message and states “Look what they’re saying about me, I am not taking this”.

A spokesperson of the Efteling called the response on Hennie from the ‘’Customer Service’’ an act of trolling,. Ultimately it was decided to remove the complaint because of the swearing used in it. Hennie has received a message that the response was not from the Efteling, but he has not responded to that. The Efteling has stated that if something similar occures where their name is being used, the theme park will take steps against the Customer Service.