Why Customers Are Raising Their Voices

How many times would you ask a business for help before you began to wonder whether anyone intended to help you?

The first time, you might be perfectly reasonable about it. A mistake happened, these things happen, and surely someone can sort it out. By the third call, though, you’re rearranging your afternoon around a problem you didn’t create, explaining yourself again to someone who seems to know nothing about the conversation you had yesterday.

I mean... at what point does getting help become its own problem?

That’s the question I keep coming back to after reading the 2025 National Customer Rage Survey. The word “rage” draws your attention, understandably, but the finding that troubles me most is quieter: 68% described complaining as effortful.

There’s something deeply discouraging about that. You’ve already had a bad experience with a business, and now getting someone to put it right has become another job.

If you’re responsible for customer service, that deserves a closer look.

What Might Have Happened Before You Answered?

Customer Care Measurement & Consulting conducted the survey with Arizona State University’s Center for Services Leadership. It used an online panel of 1,000 U.S. consumers, with core questions about their most serious product or service problem during the previous year.

Half of customers who had experienced a problem said they raised their voice, while 32% reported emotional stress from the complaint-resolution experience. These are self-reported findings, so they can’t tell us what caused any one person’s reaction.

Still, they make me wonder how much of a caller’s frustration we’re missing when we judge the conversation from the moment we pick up.

Suppose someone opens with, “I’ve called three times about this.”

You can hear the irritation immediately. What you can’t hear, unless you ask, is that they spent yesterday waiting for a callback, kept their phone beside them during dinner, and checked their email once more before bed.

That’s an imagined example, of course. But it helps explain why “Someone will get back to you” might land so badly. From your side, you’re offering the next step; from theirs, you may be repeating the very promise that brought them back.

And that leaves the person answering in a difficult position, too. They may genuinely want to help, while having no access to the earlier message and no authority to solve the issue.

A friendly voice matters here. So does giving that person something dependable to offer.

The Mistake May Be Easier to Forgive Than the Chasing

I think there’s a second disappointment that businesses can overlook.

The original problem might be a missed appointment or an incorrect charge. But after several unanswered attempts to get it sorted, the customer may also be asking, “Does my time matter to these people?”

You could correct the bill tomorrow and still leave them remembering the three afternoons it took to reach someone.

The survey doesn’t measure that exact thought. It’s a question the findings raise for me, because the effort of complaining has consequences in an ordinary person’s day. They have work to return to, a child to collect, or a lunch break that was supposed to be theirs.

That’s why an apparently small detail can carry so much weight.

When you say, “I’ve got your email about the second charge. Has anything happened since you sent it?” you’ve spared them the full explanation. You’ve also shown that something they did earlier has reached you.

Research by Grant Packard and Jonah Berger helps make sense of this. Across field research and experiments, they found that concrete language could improve customer responses by helping people feel that an employee was listening and understood their needs.

Perhaps that’s part of what makes a response feel caring. The customer can recognize their own situation in it.

“You took the afternoon off, and nobody arrived or called” tells them you’ve understood something that “We appreciate your patience” leaves untouched.

What Can You Honestly Promise?

This is where I have sympathy for the person answering, because caring about a problem doesn’t automatically give you the power to fix it.

You may need billing to investigate the charge. You may be covering calls after the office has closed. The customer wants a decision, and you have a message form.

It would be unfair to expect you to rebuild trust through tone alone.

But there is a promise worth thinking about: an agreed time when the customer will hear where things stand.

For example, if your team can support it:

“I can’t confirm the refund yet because billing needs to check both payments. I can check with them tomorrow and email you by 3 p.m., even if the review is still open.”

What I like about that promise is how achievable it can be with a little support behind it. If your team has time to check the case, a place to record the commitment, and someone who can cover when a colleague is away, you’ve given the person answering a promise they can feel good about making.

And think how that might feel for the customer. They can get on with their afternoon knowing when they’ll hear from you, rather than keeping half an eye on their phone and wondering whether to try again.

The UK Public Service Ombudsman’s complaint-handling guidance supports this approach through a named point of contact, realistic timescales, and agreed updates. Although written for public services, it offers a useful model for thinking about your own promises.

You might be unable to give someone the answer they want today. You may still be able to spare them the uncertainty of wondering whether they’ll have to ask again.

How Much Should You Show Them?

There’s another piece of research that adds an interesting complication.

Ryan Buell and Michael Norton studied what happens when people can see the work being done for them. In experiments involving online travel and dating services, making that work visible could increase how much people valued the service. But the benefits weakened as waits grew longer, and showing effort could backfire when the outcome was poor.

Those weren’t complaint calls, so we shouldn’t stretch the findings into a claim that regular updates will calm every unhappy customer. What interests me is the possibility that work can be happening without the customer having any way to recognize it.

You might have three people looking into a payment while the customer hears nothing for two days. From their side, those two days can look very much like being ignored.

An honest update gives them something firmer to understand:

“We’ve found both payments. Billing is checking whether the second charge cleared, and I’m due to hear back tomorrow.”

There’s no need to describe every internal step. The useful details are the ones that help the person understand their issue and what they can expect.

And if you discover that nobody has picked up the issue yet, you’ve found something worth fixing while you still have a chance to help. Perhaps the message needs a named recipient, or a colleague needs an easier way to flag that they’re waiting for an answer. Once you can see where it stalled, you and your team have something concrete to work on together.

The Call I'd Want to Look at More Closely

If I were exploring these findings with a service team, I’d be curious about the calls that begin, “I’m just checking whether anyone received my message.”

There’s a useful opportunity in those conversations. By following one actual case, you can see what the customer was told, what happened to their message, and where a little more support might have helped your team follow through.

Perhaps everyone assumed a colleague had replied. Or perhaps the person answering knew the complaint was open but couldn’t see who was handling it. Those are things you can work through together, and the people taking the calls may already have good ideas about what would help.

I’d also want to hear about the cases that went well. When someone did remember to check back, what made it possible? You might find that one colleague leaves particularly useful notes, or that a simple reminder has been quietly saving everyone a lot of chasing. There’s value in noticing what your team gets right and making it easier for others to do the same.

Of course, they also need your support when frustration becomes personal abuse. Caring for customers and looking after the people answering them belong in the same conversation.

What stays with me about this survey is how much room there is to make an ordinary interaction feel better. A customer who has been waiting for help may have very little idea of the effort happening on their behalf, while an employee who wants to help may only need a clearer route to the right person.

You won’t prevent every mistake or always have the answer straight away. But there’s something lovely about being able to call someone who expected to spend tomorrow chasing you and say, “I’ve been looking into this, and here’s what I’ve found.”

For your customer, that could be a real relief. For the person making the call, it’s a chance to feel good about helping someone... which is surely part of why we care about getting customer service right in the first place.

Sources

1. Customer Care Measurement & Consulting. 2025 National Customer Rage Study. Findings on complaint effort, raised voices, and emotional stress.
2. Customer Care Measurement & Consulting. The National Customer Rage Survey: Study Methodology. Online-panel methodology and the survey’s focus on consumers’ most serious product or service problems.
3. Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business. New National Customer Rage Survey Reveals Civility in Freefall Across America’s Marketplace. December 2, 2025. University-issued release confirming the collaboration, sample, and principal findings.
4. Packard, Grant, and Jonah Berger. How Concrete Language Shapes Customer Satisfaction. Journal of Consumer Research, 47(5), 787–806, February 2021; first published online July 18, 2020.
5. UK Public Service Ombudsman. Clarifying the Complaint and Explaining the Process. Guidance on points of contact, realistic timescales, and agreed progress updates.
6. Buell, Ryan W., and Michael I. Norton. The Labor Illusion: How Operational Transparency Increases Perceived Value. Management Science, 57(9), 1564–1579, September 2011.