The old adage that word of mouth wins customers is even more true in this digital age but these days many people will then use a search engine just to check out that recommendation. What happens next is the decider before buying or moving on and it appears that there is significant research that demonstrates that people will move on due to negative online comments.
So how should you respond to negative online comments? well these are our seven steps for dealing with negative online comments.
1. Respond quickly
If you are a BIG brand a customer will expect a pretty quick response, within the hour we’d suggest is best and you are likely to find those big brands monitor all the social channels with a dedicated team and will respond quickly.
2. Stay in the channel
There is nothing worse for a customer who raises an issue in say Facebook for a business to then want to move that conversation elsewhere, no they wanted the conversation in facebook so keep it in that channel.
3. Admit when you are wrong
If a complaint does comes in then it helps to have a common strategy for dealing with it and try to be as honest as possible when responding to online feedback, if you don’t then you are likely to be found out.
4. Do your best to put the issue right
For many businesses there can be no doubt that Social media is the best thing that has happened to customer service because if they’re good at it, any company can build a reputation for quality fast but on the flip side, if a company is poor at customer service, it’s now far easier to find out.
5. Don’t differ in how you would handle a situation between channels
Try to be as honest as possible when responding to any online feedback and don’t hide comments you receive, or make any excuses.
6. Be human not corporate – let your employees be themselves it will help them to develop a rapport with the customer
If you have someone complain who is in the mindset where they want to defame or attack your business online and that you get the site where they are doing that shut down or a comment taken down, then the chances are the complainer will just take that complain elsewhere on another channel. So it’s best to open up a sensible dialogue with the person criticising you and take steps to resolve an issue in the first place.
7. Remember that thousands of people could read your response
If your twitter feed has a large number of followers bear in mind that any response can be amplified far quicker to a far larger audience so make sure that you establish the truth and if it requires a response – here is a great opportunity to turn a negative to a positive.
So there you have our seven steps for dealing with negative online comments, and now the sales pitch if you need help or even just a no obligation chat then why not contact us through the website here – we’d love to show you how the team at Gleave Media can help your business proposer on Social Media.
