Dealing with Negative Comments on Social Media as Part of Your Business Process
For any business, irrespective of its domain of activity, a negative comment on social media is a big deal. Nowadays, the online reputation of a business is built on social platforms like Facebook or Twitter. Besides defining your online reputation, social media also acts as a communication channel with your customers.
The main reason businesses use social media marketing is to grow and expand the activity. Your response to negative comments on social media can have a powerful impact on this goal.
Be Ready to Sacrifice
Even on social media, the old saying is true — the customer is always right. This becomes even more so when every complaint can be publicly expressed and your brand has to handle it in front of everyone. As a result, attenuating an unhappy customer will save money in the form of better reputation.
When addressing an issue an unhappy customer is having, be prepared to forfeit some ground and alleviate their pain points. Moreover, you might even offer some additional features or perks for the trouble the customer went through.
If, for example, a customer tweets about their order taking too long, you can offer them an overnight delivery or refund the shipping cost. Besides encouraging a repeat purchase, the immediate resolution of the conflict can spark another tweet from the customer sharing his positive experience this time.
Maintain Consistency in Responses
Consistency is essential for any process within a business. Responding to negative comments is a business process as well and should be managed as such.
A business should not fall into the undesirable situation of having a disgruntled employee miss-manage the social profiles of the company. This risk can be avoided by putting effort into training the staff that will manage your social accounts.
Furthermore, have a clearly written outline of your company strategy for responding to negative comments on social media.
Go over this document with your staff and make sure everyone involved in interacting with customers is aware of your strategy. As it’s practically impossible to plan for every scenario, your employees should be prepared to use their creativity and customer service skills. They should all be prepared to do so at any time and with any type of customer.
When it inevitably happens, try to limit the disgruntled customer’s interactions with a single employee when possible, rather than having several representatives addressing the same complaint. It is best when everyone involved is on the same page about the complaint and what has been done to address it.
