It is so easy now for consumers to go on a massive rant on social media, and rip apart your service and company. We are in the keyboard warrior era. Unfortunately, people are also far, far more likely to voice their negative experiences and opinions than positive ones.

Social media is now one of the biggest platforms for customer service. It will reflect badly on your service if you leave complaints unanswered and unresolved. Other customers looking to buy from you will consider this when making their final decision. What other people say about you means a whole lot more than what you say about yourself on your website and social media.

Users expect fast responses on social media so you need to make sure that you have a person and system in place to be able to deal with the incoming messages. Facebook pages now even have an area that tells users how quickly you normally reply. You do not want this going into the red of taking days to reply!

Managing your Mentions

Here’s a quick guide for communicating with customers and dealing with any negative feedback:

Watch out for what people are saying about you. Check your notifications and search your company name to see where you’ve been mentioned.

Don’t ignore post and respond quickly. As mentioned above, you need to provide top quality customer service as this is visible to everyone on your pages. Don’t delete posts either, this will soon be found out and you will lose credibility.

Discuss the problem on the platform. You will need to show that you do respond to questions and complaints so some form of acknowledgement needs to go on the social media channel. You can then take it from there into private conversation for the full resolution.

Stay positive. Remember, the customer is ‘always’ ‘right’. Responding in a positive manner will quickly cool the conversation and resolve any issues. Do not start nitpicking and arguing in public as that’ll do more harm!