Up Next with Gabriella Mirabelli
Aug 6, 2026 · 28 min · 13 segments
**Rod Duclos**, Associate Professor of Marketing at Ivey Business School at Western University, joins Up Next to discuss research published in April 2026 in the **International Journal of Research in…
Rod DuclosGuest
Gabriella MirabelliHostMost organizations trying to figure out which unhappy customers are about to become their biggest problem focus on what those customers say, the severity of the demand, the tone, the explicit threat.
And you and your colleagues' research suggests that they might be missing a pretty important signal.
Your paper focuses on structure, specifically grammatical voice, which is a level most people never consciously perceive, and a lot of people don't even know.
you're correct first of all when managers or consumers think about complaints they tend to think of it primarily in terms of content the gist of what happened you can think about your uber ride picking you up late or at the wrong street corner or being locked out of your airbnb rental some people will go as far as thinking about complaints in terms of tone so how angry or activated the person sounds we take a different route We look at linguistic structures, specifically grammatical voice.
We think it's a telltale sign of how likely people are to escalate their complaints.
But why did you even think of it? Did something happen? Was there a triggering thing? Or were you just, I'm interested in linguistics and this hasn't been studied, so let's check it out.
The lead author of the paper, Amir, has a knack for gathering data, all kinds of data sets, and mining them for some sort of effects.
And then he steps back and says, okay, is this interesting? And when we were talking about it, I'm like, huh, this is interesting because I also like to fight the good fight.
The more consumers use passive voice when they express themselves, the more likely they are to escalate their complaint.
And you can think of escalation in a variety of ways demanding to speak to management writing scathing reviews online you could be telling your friends your family your colleagues you could lodge a complaint with the better business bureau you can even initiate legal action so escalation takes a variety of forms and we find that grammatical voice is an early signal that helps firms or organizations predict which customers are likely to escalate.
First of all, thank you for noticing that passive voice predicts escalation, but it does not cause it because this is a nuance that can be lost sometimes.
And you're also right on the other part, which is, of course, the explicit content of what you say.
Most organizations trying to figure out which unhappy customers are about to become their biggest problem focus on what those customers say, the severity of the demand, the tone, the explicit threat.
And you and your colleagues' research suggests that they might be missing a pretty important signal.
Your paper focuses on structure, specifically grammatical voice, which is a level most people never consciously perceive, and a lot of people don't even know.
you're correct first of all when managers or consumers think about complaints they tend to think of it primarily in terms of content the gist of what happened you can think about your uber ride picking you up late or at the wrong street corner or being locked out of your airbnb rental some people will go as far as thinking about complaints in terms of tone so how angry or activated the person sounds we take a different route We look at linguistic structures, specifically grammatical voice.
We think it's a telltale sign of how likely people are to escalate their complaints.
But why did you even think of it? Did something happen? Was there a triggering thing? Or were you just, I'm interested in linguistics and this hasn't been studied, so let's check it out.
The lead author of the paper, Amir, has a knack for gathering data, all kinds of data sets, and mining them for some sort of effects.
And then he steps back and says, okay, is this interesting? And when we were talking about it, I'm like, huh, this is interesting because I also like to fight the good fight.
The more consumers use passive voice when they express themselves, the more likely they are to escalate their complaint.
And you can think of escalation in a variety of ways demanding to speak to management writing scathing reviews online you could be telling your friends your family your colleagues you could lodge a complaint with the better business bureau you can even initiate legal action so escalation takes a variety of forms and we find that grammatical voice is an early signal that helps firms or organizations predict which customers are likely to escalate.
First of all, thank you for noticing that passive voice predicts escalation, but it does not cause it because this is a nuance that can be lost sometimes.
And you're also right on the other part, which is, of course, the explicit content of what you say.
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