Data Janitors: Handling Negative Comments on Social

Social media isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. Social gives consumers the opportunity to communicate their love for your brand with a quick wiggle of their thumbs but it also allows them to voice disappointments just as easily

Your customer expected an experience with your brand, you dropped the ball, the experience was disappointing and the client is upset. Your Facebook wall/Twitter/etc. is now the proud owner of a negative review. Mistakes happen, a miscommunication led to a major screw up and regardless of how it went down you need to handle it and handle it quickly. Here are some tips that will help you increase your social media monitoring capabilities.

Practice your listening skills

We all know what it’s like banging our heads against the wall arguing with someone who isn’t listening. Or even worse receiving and apology followed by a “but”. Don’t be that guy. People voice their opinions, positive and negative because they want to be heard. This is the time you need to listen and listen well. What are these person actually saying, what is their concern and what is he/she looking for?

Be sincere and apologize

Blanket style “We are so sorry about your experience, we will try to do better” apologies may have worked in the past but in 2016 anyone over the age of 5 can tell how disingenuous you sound. Not only does this look lazy on your part but it shows your customers you don’t care about the quality of service you provide.

Offer a solution to the problem your client has expressed. If the issue is complicated it’s best to move the communication from social media to private message, email or telephone.

Be quick, like really quick

The digital world is a savage place full of maddening expectations. Consumers often expect a response to a complaint within an hour regardless of the day or time. Good news is consumers are highly responsive to quick responses and often time will spread the word about how awesome your brand handled the situation. Have you ever seen the Taco Bell War Room? Give it a google, I’ll be patient… this is a room comprised of what academics like to call ‘Data Janitors’. They handle every post, negative or positive, from every pleased customer to each internet troll out there. They are a group of individuals dedicated to superior social media monitoring of your social media comments.

Never delete legitimate posts

You can’t ignore customer complaints and hope they just go away. When you ignore people and in this case delete their concerns without even addressing them, you feed the anger. In addition to angering an already upset customer, deleting comments makes you look fake. The digital world praises transparency in brands, be honest, making mistakes its part of being real as long as you handle it properly.

Use humour carefully

We’ve seen many examples of brands countering costumer complaints with a perfectly timed witty response. When executed properly this type of response can win lots of brownie points. Used in the wrong setting it can discount your clients concerns and hurt your brand image.

Watch for Trolls

Occasionally you will be attacked by the mysterious trolls of the interweb. There is nothing worse than an internet troll. If there is no legitimacy to the post and it is clearly not relevant you can remove them. With time you will be able to spot a troll instantly.

Are you having troubles finding the right tools or strategizing for your social media monitoring plan? Give us a call. It’s kind of what we do. We dislike internet trolls as much as the next person. We know how to handle them, we’ve been dealing with them for quite some time now. They really aren’t as scary as it seems. They are just individuals wanting to be heard (at least that’s what we tell ourselves).