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In my previous post, Fearing the Social Media Backlash, I talked about how companies can use negative feedback, ratings and posts to their advantage. In this post I’ll talk more about the strategy and tactics that you can employ to foster a better connection to your customers, improve your products and services, and protect your brand from an online backlash.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a global brand with millions of customer interactions a day, or a mom and pop deli, these principles apply. The scale of execution may be different, but at a fundamental level, small companies, as well as large, can and should be doing the same kinds of things to manage their social media spaces.
Resources
One of the biggest mistakes companies make is to treat their online interactions as a low priority, and subsequently not allocate the proper resources to the tasks at hand. Make it part of someone’s job description, and then give them the resources and authority to act to fix a problem, within certain limits, on behalf of the company.
Monitor
With so many blogs, message boards and rating systems out there it can be daunting trying to wrap your head around monitoring your feedback. Large global brands certainly have the tools and resources to keep tabs on the conversation around their brand. But smaller companies can and should monitor their social media spaces. Here are few low-cost or free ideas for doing that:
Google Alerts – Create an alert in Google News for your company and product names. You’ll see whenever a news story or blog post talks about your brand.
Local Guide Sites - Yelp, Foursquare, Google Places should be monitored closely for both positive and negative comments.
Social Mention – This free service looks and works a lot like Google, but it is specifically for social media monitoring. It has some nice tools for sentiment (positive, negative, neutral), keywords, users and hashtags.
Your site – If you sell online, turn on the ratings for your products and be diligent about looking at the comments and ratings. Use some analytics to drill down for a more complex picture of your customer satisfaction and service.
Reacting To Negative Reviews
So what do you do when you get that negative review? First, take a breath. The natural response to defend yourself could easily come off poorly. Ask yourself, is the comment real, or is it a fake review from someone with another agenda?
If the comment is real, then don’t make excuses. Own the problem. Offer to fix it or make amends. If it is a real problem you have a good chance of making it right. At the very least you will look like you truly care about your customers. After you make good on it, ask the reviewer to update their review.
However, if you make excuses, and come off defensive you just make it worse. Don’t succumb to the temptation of a public online battle with a disgruntled customer.
Negative Comments Build Credibility
One of the more subtle aspects of the psychology of negative reviews is that they actually serve to build credibility for the entire pool of comments. Think about how you react to a site where there are dozens and dozens of glowing reviews, but not a single negative review or rating. You likely will not trust those reviews.
Of course, if do are getting a high volume of bad reviews, then there may be something fundamentally wrong with your business that needs correcting, and you need to step up and correct the problems with your services and products.
Own Your Social Media Space
What we frequently see when a business doesn’t monitor their social media space is that the negative reviews dominate. People tend to be more passionate when they have a bad experience and are more likely to complain more than praise, so it is common to see local reviews with a few bad posts and no positive ones. If that sounds like your business, then the truth is that it is largely your fault for letting your social media space founder.
To correct this, you have to “own” your social media space. To do this:
- Update your listings – make sure they are accurate.
- Ask your happy customers to submit reviews, even videos.
- Prepare a tip sheet that you can give a willing customer to show them how to do it.
- Offer a small incentive for customers to give review – discount, free service, etc.
- Never, ever, submit a fake review, either positive about your company, or negative about a competitor. You get caught, you get banned.
The last one is crucial, and can’t be overstated. Aside from the practical aspects of the bad consequences of posting fake reviews, it is highly unethical.
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