How to Effectively Handle a Negative Comment on Social Media
Social media can encourage disgruntled customers to publically complain and leave a negative review or negative comments on a business’s social media page. Dealing with dissatisfaction through comments on social media for everyone else to see can be quite uncomfortable and has been one of the main reasons some businesses have delayed joining social networks.
But there are ways businesses can turn a negative comment on social media into a sales opportunity.
There are a few ways you can do so, if you’ve received negative comments or a negative review on your social media accounts.
First, acknowledge the negative comments fast. You don’t want to show the rest of your community you’re slow at customer service. This is why it’s important to monitor a few times a day or at least once a day your accounts. If you published something on your Facebook page recently, then quickly look if anyone has left negative comments on the post that needs to be addressed. Or if you have a review tab on your Facebook page, check if anyone has left a negative review. The same applies if you have a Twitter account or Instagram account. If you published anything recently, then check at least once a day to see if any negative comments have been left.
Then, remember to treat the disgruntled customer like you would a friend, and really listen to their concern. Your negative review response could be “Thank you for letting us know, we’re really sorry you had a bad experience” can really go a long way. And remember to also address them by their first name, so you maintain a friendly tone. For example you can say “Thank you Samantha for letting us know you’re disappointed with your order, we are looking into it and will get back to you as soon as possible”.
Then, end your negative review response by letting them know you’ll message them privately. A mistake to avoid with a negative review response is offering a solution publicly. Offering discounts or gifts publically might invite more people to complain to get the same treatment.
Therefore, an appropriate response to a negative comment on social media could be: “Thank you Samantha for letting us know, we’re really sorry you had a bad experience. I’m sending you a private message now to get this resolved as soon as possible.”
You can find examples of negative comments on social media on Domino’s Pizza’s page. One of their negative review response recently was:
“I apologize for the service you have received, Jas! Please contact our India team directly for further assistance” soon after a customer stated on social media that their pizza took an hour to be delivered.
Once the communication between the customer and you is private, offer a solution to show you’re willing to make it right.
Examples of negative comments on social media could be “I placed my order 2 weeks ago and still haven’t received it”. If that’s the case, look into why they haven’t received it yet first, and then explain the reason and offer them an alternative solution. For example your answer could be “we have tracked your parcel and it looks like it is arriving on Tuesday, please let us know if you don’t receive it then”.
Other examples of negative comments on social media could be “The item I received was damaged”. If that’s the case, provide them an email address where they can send a picture of the faulty product.
Handling a negative comment on social media fast and effectively can be a great opportunity for businesses to show publicly what a great business they are and how much they value their customers. In fact, dealing with these publicly can display an unmatched level of transparency and set some businesses apart from their competition.
When dealing with unhappy customers and their negative comments, you can choose to go a step further, and turn these customers into evangelists, by following up with them on social media, asking how they are, and if they were happy with how their concern was handled.
Alternatively, if the issue they raised in their negative comments was justified, you can offer gifts such as discount coupons for their next purchase, a free product or even send a card by post apologizing for the problem they encountered.
This can lead to the customer raving about you to their friends or even publicly on social media. It’s not uncommon for people to post comments on social media about how happy they are about nice gestures made by businesses. These comments on social media really act as word-of-mouth marketing for the business and portrays them as the shining example of excellent customer service.
The biggest mistakes to avoid when receiving complaints, are ignoring the messages altogether, or even worse, deleting them.
The only time a brand or business could consider deleting some comments on social media, is if they are inappropriate, offensive, rude or fake and unjustified.
