Negativity towards your business can be difficult to manage, but it’s even more so when it’s done in public on social media, for all eyes to see. Online negativity, especially when on social media is harder to navigate and can leave devastating effects on your business’ reputation since the customer’s complaints and your response will be available for your entire target audience to see.
Also, because it is online, you will be interacting with your customer through a screen, where you will not be able to immediately establish a human connection with the upset customer nor can handle this in a discrete manner.
Dealing with negative comments on social media is different than dealing with “traditional” complaints, received by phone, email, or in person.
There is one reason - it’s too easy to turn a social media complaint into a disaster.
Why should you care about social media complaints?
Social media is public. Every time someone writes badly about your product or service, everyone can see it.
People will judge your business on several criteria:
How long it took to respond to the message
How you reacted to the comment
How your customer reacted to your response
How the interaction ended
Responding to customers on social media is all about a quick reaction and genuine response. People that use social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are likely active users, many of which are daily users. According to SocialMediaToday, 60% of customers who complain on social media expect a response within one hour.
You and your business need to be ready to meet those expectations to keep customers happy and loyal to your business.
Most importantly, never EVER leave a negative review alone. People will notice and will draw a conclusion that you don’t care about your customers. They will then take their business elsewhere!
Is your company prepared to handle negative comments on social media?
You might be feeling overwhelmed by the pressure to respond to these comments in an appropriate and time sensitive manner. This is normal. Dealing with unhappy customers is a stressful part of any business, but it’s a necessary part.
The biggest tip we can give you is:
Make sure there is only ONE person responsible for handling comments on social media sites and that they know how to respond.
By having only one employee be in charge of handling negative comments, you minimize miscommunications and PR nightmares. If there is more than one person responding to comments, it’s quite possible that a comment would become neglected because your employee thought the other team member was going to respond to it.
Also, with one person responding to clients, you lose the possibility of sending mixed messages (or completely different messages!) to your customers. Your messages will be consistent and have the same tone and voice.
Keep in mind that you want to make sure that your one employee knows how to respond to negative comments in a professional and empathetic manner. Otherwise, that one employee will bring down your entire company!
But, how SHOULD you respond? How should you react?
Your first priority is to see if you received a negative comment on social media. Remember to check all your business’ social media profiles on all social platforms including unofficial fan pages. Here’s a quick list of places to search for negative comments:
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ (official business page and unofficial fan pages)
LinkedIn (official company page)
Medium blog post comments
Website and business blog post comments
You should respond to a negative comment as soon as you received it. We recommend aiming to respond within 15 minutes to make a good impression, but if you’re not able to do so, try to respond within that first hour.
Remember, most people are daily social media users which means that you can receive negative comments at any time on any day, including at night and on weekends. If you stop checking for negative comments on Friday at 5pm, you can easily miss negative comments that show up that night or over the weekend!
The faster you respond, the better your business will look on social media!
Just keep in mind that what you say matters as much as your response time. If you respond within 1 minute of the comment being sent out but in all caps, in a rude tone, and drop some swears, you will probably lose a lot of customers.
You need to respond calmly and genuinely.
We know how easy it is to take a comment personally. It gets even harder when you’ve been doing your best to make your business shine and your customers are still unsatisfied. Of course, you won’t be able to satisfy everyone, but you still have to respect everyone.
There are two types of negative commenters: dissatisfied customers and Internet trolls.
You need to 1) figure out which commenters are dissatisfied customers and which are Internet trolls, and 2) make things right with your customers and get rid of unwanted trolls as soon as possible.
An Internet troll is a person who starts arguments on the Internet to distract or provoke readers to display emotional responses. Usually, these arguments are off-topic, vulgar, or discriminatory. Internet trolls feed off of anger and frustration.
You never want to give trolls an emotional response, because you will feed into their behavior and be judged by your behavior.
How to respond to negative commenters:
Always remember to respond quickly and calmly. Always be respectful of your customers. You will want to minimize your interaction with negative commenters in a public setting as much as possible to avoid a disaster.
To do so, follow these steps when responding to an angry customer or troll:
Thank them (using their name or social media handle) for their opinion. A short “thanks [customer name] for reaching out to us” is fine.
Apologize for the inconvenience. “We are sorry to hear that you are having problems with our product/service.”
Encourage them to send you a private message. “Please DM us so we can work to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.”
Make it a point to incorporate these three parts to your response to every commenter. That way, you will avoid a business nightmare!
Once you get in touch with your customer in private, handle the complaint as you would normally:
1. Thank the customer for sharing their opinion. “Thank you [customer name] for taking the time to write/call us.”
2. Apologize and repeat the problem that they have stated. “We are sorry to hear that you are having problems with [customer’s problem or issue].”
3. Explain what your business will do to help and when you will get back to them (do NOT forget to follow up!)
Should you ever remove negative comments?
NO.
It will be tempting, but you should never, EVER remove negative comments from customers. If you do remove a comment from an upset customer and not a troll, we can guarantee they will come back - louder, angrier, and even more frustrated.
Also, it may be hard to believe but negative comments show that you are a true, honest brand. If you only had good opinions, a customer would think you either made all these comments up or paid for them.
They would try to investigate for more opinions on the Internet, in forums or review sites. Sooner or later, they will find negative feedback and feel betrayed. You will lose them as a potential customer to your business because they felt like you were trying to trick them since you weren’t being honest.
The only time you can remove a comment is when you are 1,000% sure you received a comment from a troll. This comment may be
Vulgar or discriminatory comments
Completely off-topic questions
Spam (in all media including text, photo, and video)
Advertising another brand or company
In this case, someone is intentionally hurting your business, brand, or image so you can delete the comment.
Conclusion:
Social media is not only useful for sharing information and connecting with your audience. It is also a place for customer service. Remember, when you come across a negative comment about your business or brand, try to respond as soon as possible in a polite, calm way.
Do not be afraid to remove hateful or unreasonable comments, but NEVER delete comments from customers. Even after you have resolved the issue, do not delete customer comments.
Best of luck,
The Solomoto Team
P.S. What are the biggest struggles you are having with your current marketing strategy right now? Share them with us in *the comments below* or get in touch with one of our team members over Facebook or Twitter, and we will do our best to help!
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