The Backfire Effect
We have this situation here at Highrise. Our bulk email service debuted roughly two years ago and it gives customers the ability to send bulk email and newsletters. This new feature didn’t cost anything extra — existing users just received the ability to send bulk email after the announcement.
And expectedly, sometimes we’re forced to pause an account’s access to our bulk email service because their spam complaints are too high or too many emails bounce.
But no one likes hearing: “look your email isn’t performing very well. People are marking it as spam or it’s bouncing quite a bit. We have to pause your ability to send email while you clean your list or improve how you get properly opted in email recipients.”
A common first reaction we get is. “I’m not a spammer. This email doesn’t have anything to do with drugs or sex or casinos. I’m just emailing people I’ve done business with in the past.”
It doesn’t matter though in Google’s eyes what the content is when they see a large number of emails bouncing or triggering spam complaints. So, regardless of their intention, we still pause their bulk email to focus on helping them follow better practices and send better email.
Some customers, who’ve been doing business with us for years, now quit because we’ve angered them about how we’ve handled their bulk email.
Is there anything we can do?
My wife, three year old daughter and I eat breakfast together every morning and read the paper. My daughter is pretty good at eating a healthy breakfast. But a year ago she’d boldly announce after breakfast that she wanted a jelly bean.
Now, we’re not the epitome of health food eaters in our household. But we don’t eat candy for breakfast!
So of course I’d tell her, “No jelly beans for breakfast.”
And she’d just melt down. Crying. Yelling. We just had the perfect morning and breakfast and now the world is over.
Is there any way to break through?
Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, Professors of Political Science at Dartmouth College and University of Exeter respectively, gathered a group of people who label themselves as conservatives and gave them a fake news article about the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Across the world, you probably know something about the U.S. invading Iraq under the premise that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and the U.S. was going in to remove them. Now, most people also understand that no WMDs have ever been found. Something most people treat as fact.
But this fake news article mentioned the U.S. HAD found WMD’s in Iraq.
Nyhan and Reifler then split the group of conservatives and gave half of them a correction to the fake news article. A fact check. “Sorry for the mistake. WMD’s weren’t actually found.”
Then they asked both groups, “Do you believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?”
The group given that correction… They were now even more likely to believe Iraq had them.
That’s crazy. You gave people even more evidence that their viewpoint is wrong, and they become even more entrenched in their view.
Nyhan and Reifler called it The Backfire Effect.
It makes sense when you think about your own feelings when people contradict you. You want it — you believe it — even more.
So thinking about this research and my daughter, I approached our jelly bean problem differently.
Instead of saying “NO jelly beans!” I said, “Look honey, I want a jelly bean too. In fact, I want ice cream! I want a lot of fun stuff in the morning.”
She stopped crying. Then her eyes got real wide. She started jumping out of her chair and told me, “Daddy! Ice cream’s in the freezer. I’ll get it!”
Did I cause yet a new problem?
But I kept going. I said, “I’d like to have ice cream but I choose not to have ice cream and jelly beans for breakfast. I can’t have them for breakfast because they’re not healthy for me. I try to have a best possible start to my day with things like vegetable+fruit smoothies every morning.”
All of a sudden she was different. The meltdown was over and she listened to me. She asked Why a couple times about my decision-making and then just moved on.
It dawned on me — a company that I do business with actually just did this with me.
Indinero, a company I use for accounting on a side project of mine called Draft, recently upset me. So I emailed them back with a bit of nastygram about how I wasn’t happy with something they did.
But their customer support person emailed back with “I understand. I would be angry in your situation too. Here’s why we think the bad stuff happened, and how we can fix it in the future.”
What’s interesting is that nothing had actually changed at that point about what I was upset about. But I was so much happier with them. I was cooled down. I felt like I had been really listened too. And I continue to recommend them to others.
So I tried this with a customer of mine too. Someone had complained on Twitter about an onboarding email I send with three instructional videos inside. He tweeted to all his followers that there’s no way he’s going to get started with Highrise if he has to watch three videos!
It was an embarrassing tweet for me.
So I tweeted back with my new approach to avoiding The Backfire Effect: “I understand. You’re right. I wouldn’t watch three onboarding videos myself either. We put them out there for people who want visual, in-depth, hand-holding, but I agree with you. I probably should change the way I phrase this stuff in my onboarding email a bit to NOT make it seem like you have to watch these videos. Highrise is one of those things you can get started on without the manual.”
He replied back that I was doing a great job and he deleted the tweet.
Understanding The Backfire Effect has improved how we handle some of our harshest critics. It helped cool down conflict during tough support calls about our bulk email service and makes conversations more productive.
But one thing I also think it has a huge effect on is not just the person we’re having the disagreement with, but ourselves. That customer who Tweeted, I might have changed his mind some, but he changed mine too, and helped make my business better.
Avoiding The Backfire Effect can work both ways.
P.S. You should follow me on YouTube.
