Engineer for Behaviour or Brace for Reputation Impact

Does your company need a social media “reputation management” team that constantly fights the fires of public complaints?

You may implicitly be engineering for exactly that outcome. Human behaviour is a science - and if you’re not engineering for it, you’re engineering to get backlash from it.

It’s no wonder so many companies face customers voicing frustration online. Studies show dissatisfaction is at record highs - and in many cases, that reaction is built right into the experience by design.

Take a personal example. I recently flew internationally with Air Canada. The flight itself was great — I slept better than I had in years. But thanks to a powerful quirk of psychology known as the peak‑end rule, my memory of the trip was shaped entirely by its peak highlight and its final moments.

The peak: discovering that the “premium” seat I paid for wasn’t at the bulkhead as promised, but one row behind, with no recourse on a full flight.

The end: retrieving my brand‑new luggage, only to find seven holes and two broken wheels.

I had a legitimate complaint: I didn’t get what I paid for, my baggage was damaged, and I now had extra costs to deal with before returning home. Naturally, I wanted to raise this with the airline.

Now the critical question: when a customer has a legitimate issue, what behaviour is your system engineered to produce?

Here’s what greeted me:

• Flight attendants could only apologize - no fixes possible.
• Ground staff could open a “case file” but not offer resolution.
• The mobile app listed contact options: phone (long holds), website (complex forms, no chat), and social media (X or Facebook Messenger).

The path of least resistance was clear. I’ve been primed, in fact steered, to utilize social media.

So I tried reaching out via Facebook Messenger. The response, from the Social Media Team, redirected me to open a case with the Customer Care Team via yet another webpage with a maze of forms asking for information I didn’t have readily available in that moment. In effect, their mistake had become my workload.

At this point, every psychological factor is pushing the customer to complain in a publicly visible way. Metaphorically speaking it’s the cheapest, shortest, most direct route with minimal layovers. As evidence: writing this article took significantly less time than completing the claim.

By comparison, a fast, low-effort resolution, for example, a few eUpgrade credits automatically added to my frequent flyer account, would have transformed my frustration into loyalty. Not because of the monetary value, but because of the ease. Though there were at least 4 touchpoints where this could have happened, the recovery journey was instead left undesigned - so dissatisfaction was amplified.

This is not abstract theory. It is the predictable outcome of behavioural science. And it’s not about Air Canada. This is about YOUR organization, and what you’re missing out on when you fail to engineer for human behaviour.

Mistakes happen in any organization. Complaints are inevitable. The real test is whether your systems make resolution simple or painful. If your easiest channel is social media, don’t be surprised when that’s where customers end up.

At CUBE, we work with the science of how people really behave. Not guesswork. Not gut feel. Science. We help you see what drives your customers: their wants and goals. We help your team choose the behaviours that matter most. Then we show you how to engineer for them.

If you want:

• to know how well your customer touchpoints, including in-venue audio and video, and telephony interactions, perform
• to know how your competitors’ touchpoints perform
• to know how customers perceive you subconsciously vs your competitors
• Hands‑on workshops that help your team uncover what drives your customers, identify which actions matter most, and engineer ways to make those actions happen, via customer touchpoints
• Cost-smart research to test likely outcomes prior to roll-out

Then it only takes 30 seconds to schedule a 30 minute exploratory call. Purely exploratory, with no fee, no obligation, and no pressure.