How To Successfully Manage Negative Feedback

The Internet, and in particular social networks, are becoming the natural setting for the relationship between brand and consumer. From small and medium-sized companies to large multinationals, brands are increasingly aware of the opportunities offered by the network and seek to have a good page or profile from which to sell, manage customer service — in short, to communicate.

However, it is not about bombarding with your products, services and offers. It’s not even about offering content that you know your audience is interested in. The most important thing is that you allow it to be a two-way communication. And that means you have to be willing to listen to everything — even when it’s not what we want to hear — and then act accordingly.

What are the most frequent negative comments? You are a brand trying to sell its product, and often negative comments will go against the quality or functionality of the product. In addition, you are on the web to foster communication with the customer, so the way you manage this relationship can be another target for criticism: payment methods, shipping methods, the appearance of a physical store, etc. The consumer can reproach you for almost anything, but in doing so, they are also offering you valuable information.

How can you act: There are five steps you can’t skip

1. Monitor

You are aware of the importance of user feedback, you are willing to take advantage of criticism and you want to communicate effectively with your customers. Therefore, it is essential that you listen to them: they will not always go directly to your profiles to give their opinion about your brand, you have to control as many sources as possible. To do this, it is essential to have a good monitoring and analysis tool that will allow you to manage customer service directly from the platform by publishing and responding to their comments.

2. Define an action plan

The web is not a separate reality. As in the offline world, you know that you are exposed to the opinion of others and that this does not always have to be positive. Before the bad reviews arrive, you must have defined a series of actions that will enable you to manage negative comments optimally. Being clear about the steps to take will allow you to be faster and more effective, avoiding greater evils.

3. Look for the reason first hand

Don’t close in on yourself and your brand — if you have found a negative opinion and the user does not express the reason, ask them directly. We all like to be listened to — if you ignore a critical comment, you will not be able to take advantage of it.

4. Do not censor

Never do that. If you just delete them, it will be understood that you are unable or unwilling to solve what the consumer is asking you to do. And it is not only the consumer who will think this, the network has the capacity to make almost any content viral; not dealing with a simple comment can lead you to suffer a real reputation crisis.

5. Respond

Many times, you will not have to ask the user why they criticized you, but you must always interact with them — apologize, offer a real solution and inform them of all your actions. Many times, it will be the customer themselves who deletes their negative comment because it is already worthless.

And then what?

You have managed to handle a negative opinion, you have solved a customer’s problem, there is no reputation crisis in sight and, above all, you have not fallen into the temptation of censoring a bad review. Congratulations! You will more than likely come out of this stronger for it.

Seemingly noxious comments have another, much more important quality — they are often constructive. The customer makes you see flaws that you probably hadn’t noticed. Moreover, the presence of negative opinions on your profile or page does not necessarily go against your prestige, on the contrary, you will often notice that the variety of opinions positively influences your reliability. And don’t forget that, above all, fostering communication means humanizing your relationship with your customers. They will thank you for it.