Branded complaints

"...There's so much destruction all over the world and all you can do is complain about me..."

Morrisey - All you need is me.

The furore that has developed surrounding two British entertainers, Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand and their outrageous behaviour has salutary lessons for all communicators.

The wealth of passionate debate, the ‘Questions in the House,’ the entry of the ‘parental’ regulator, the emergency BBC trustee ‘conclave’ and the carrion call by thousands of others howling derision to radio phone ins, letter pages and blogs has been breath taking.

But for me, there are perhaps two points. What role is there, if any, for mockery as a humorous device and secondly, what constitutes a complaint?

Let us look at complaints first. When this story started to build, supporters and apologists for the two entertainers quite often pointed out that following the broadcast only two complaints were received by the broadcaster and used this as some sort of validation for their actions. The 30,000 and rising complaints received, as the story gathered momentum, were dismissed as irrelevant. So why is it that numbers of complaints are actually relevant. In fact they are not, and our target driven culture misleads us into thinking they are somehow important. It is the context of the complaint and the actions we take to first listen and act upon a complaint. The BBC has found its reputation taken to the cleaners but no doubt that is because they judge complaints by a target. Had say a 1,000 people filed a complaint then they may have acted sooner and maintained control of what is now a crisis situation with no winners. in future they will need to act upon every complaint and not just the sum total.

As for mockery, well it is a part of our humorous armoury, and it is to be hoped that entertainers will not be gagged or stifled by the current firestorm. It is context that matters yet again – the E4 programme Fonejacker spends its time parodying Indian call centres and African based scams but without any sense of making the call recipients victims or any hint of racism. It is the context that matters and there lies the important lesson – one I was taught by a teacher at primary school, and that is we should always laugh with someone and not at them.

Humour and dealing with complaints are key aspects of doing business. We communicators must help business find the context.