Enterprise Communications Featured Article

Part of understanding the customer experience of your company is ensuring that customers have a platform from which to voice their concerns and—hopefully—get answers back from someone in your company addressing them. This adds a personal touch and shows that your company, no matter how big, cares about the customer on an individual basis. And on social media, this is particularly beneficial as it strengthens the relationship with individual customers while also publically promoting your commitment to quality customer service. But how should companies handle negative feedback on such a public forum?

As common as it is for happy customers to share their experiences online, it’s possibly even more common for unhappy customers to take to social media to vent their woes. Upon seeing comments from an angry customer comments, many enterprise businesses’ first impulse may be to delete the comment or not respond to it at all. But enterprises must be prepared to weather these complaints, no matter how virally they spread online, and address them smartly rather than neglecting them and hoping they will go away.

As InsideFacebook recently pointed out, customers today expect a speedy and helpful response when they reach out to companies, and that includes communications initiated through social media. There are three basic steps that enterprises should follow to ensure that unhappy customers are handled with care and that the company’s overall reputation for customer service remains intact.

The first step is easy: simply acknowledge the complaint. InsideFacebook warns against directing customers to a feedback forum or help page, as that can come across as impersonal and insincere—like a stock response. The second step is to apologize for the inconvenience the issue has placed on the customer. The key here is to apologize sincerely, rather than making it sound empty. Businesses that clearly aren’t taking the time or consideration to address specific complaints will undoubtedly come across as insincere when apologizing. And thirdly, take the complaint offline, but only once the issue has been resolved, or the customer has provided a more direct line of contact such as a phone number or email address.

Using these basic principles to guide your enterprise through even the nastiest complaints on social media, you will find that customers are happier, and your business is too.