So someone is complaining about your business or service on social media. Simmer down, Twitter Fingers. Before firing a passive-aggressive response their way, take a step back and breathe. Fact: You cannot avoid negative social media engagement, no matter how strong your brand is or how hard your team works, but it is possible to minimize its impact on your brand image.
The best defense is a good offense. Negative social media mentions present an opportunity to show your business’s dedication to resolving issues and keeping customers satisfied. Create a brand worthy of customer loyalty with our tips on how to handle negative engagement on social media.
Track Mentions
An angry customer won’t always take the time to find your social media handle and complain directly to you. To ensure nothing slips through the cracks, we recommend using social media monitoring tools that track your business name. As an example, some social media management platforms, such as Sprout Social or Buffer, have the ability to track all mentions, hashtags, and campaigns on your social media channels whether the users tagged you or not.
Respond In A Timely Fashion
The timeliness of your response is important. According to Convince & Convert, 42% of social media users expect a response within 60 minutes, and 57% expect the same response time on evenings and weekends. Now, we understand that you might not be able to respond to every mention within the hour and that your team might not be big enough to undertake that task. Taking the time to set up automated responses through Facebook Messenger is a great way to engage with your audience, should their complaint be sent through Messenger. On it, you can thank them for getting in touch, let them know the estimated response time, or give them additional ways to contact your business. We recommend addressing consumer complaints within 24 hours.
Stand Back. Don’t Attack.
Whatever you do, don’t lose your head and reply aggressively. When you address a complaint on social media, make sure your response is sincere and genuine because your audience will be quick to pick up on a canned response. We recommend personalizing the response and directly acknowledging the complaint. It is in your best interest to show transparency, honesty, and offer up a solution if necessary to turn the situation around.
We find that a lot of business owners have a hard time not taking things personally, which makes sense because your business is your baby. If you can’t separate yourself from the business we recommend you delegating to someone on your staff who is sufficiently dispassionate or hiring a social media agency to manage your social engagement.
Slide Into Their DMs
After you publicly acknowledge a complaint on social media, move the conversation to a private channel should you need sensitive information from the customer such as an order number, or to allow the customer to elaborate on their experience. Offer compensation on a case-by-case basis. Once you have settled the issue or complaint, make sure to follow up on the original public post to close the loop on the conversation.
Don’t Take Any Abuse
Social media complaints can range from easy-to-address frustrations to outright abuse. If your business is criticized on social media, respond politely, but do not put up with vulgar, profane, discriminatory or inappropriate comments. It is important to protect your brand integrity and reputation. We recommend setting social media guidelines for acceptable and unacceptable behavior to provide guidance on how to address these complaints. Warn the trolls that their behavior is not acceptable and further abuse will result in being blocked.
