Social media is a great way for consumers to connect with your brand, no matter what your service or product may be. However, this is additionally a simple outlet for customers to complain about a negative experience with your brand. With that being said, it’s important to not only promptly respond to those who have had a negative experience, but to additionally know how to respond and make the situation better. Did you know that approximately 70% of businesses ignore customer complaints on Twitter? Stand out from the majority; here are 5 tips for dealing with negative tweets on Twitter:
- First and foremost, ensure that you look into the issue that’s being addressed. Is it something you can help with immediately, or is it something that needs to be pushed along to another department? No matter what the issue or experience may have been, it’s important to figure out the proper point person or department that can make the customer happy.
- Respond promptly. Even though your business most likely closes at about 5 p.m., it’s important to have a plan for tweets that are sent after hours, as today’s society is always on and has the ability to make negativity about your brand go viral in minutes. Many brands have an alternate Twitter to their main brand that acts as a support account that is available for extended hours and monitors the tweets that come in to the main brand. This may be wise if you’re finding that you are receiving complaints off hours, and it may also be beneficial to have some employees with mobile capability so that they can respond the instant a tweet is received.
- Automated responses are not the way to go. Sometimes it seems easiest to give the most prompt responses by having automated tweets set up. Unfortunately, this can cause issues as a keyword to trigger a response can actually be a negative tweet, resulting in your brand responding positively to a negative tweet. This makes your brand looks both snarky and careless, as someone resorted to Twitter to express their feelings and all they received in return was an automated response. It’s crucial to have thoughtful staff on board that can point them in the right direction.
- Respond to everyone. Imagine you are in a store and an employee helps everyone around but you. This is comparable to not responding to every tweet you receive on Twitter. You must make an effort to address ALL concerns, even if for whatever reason one seems less valid than another. You mustn’t forget the power of people on social media. Negative news always overpowers the positive.
- Offer a solution! It’s nice to address a problem and apologize sincerely, but to offer a solution to the problem is a major key in customer retention. Not only will this make the upset customer happier, but it will additionally show other consumers that your brand is trustworthy and cares about its’ customer experience.
Certainly one would hope the negative feedback they receive on feedback is minimal, but it does happen. It is fairly difficult to make everyone happy, but it’s crucial to try. If you don’t have the time that is needed to invest in full reputation management to keep your brand identity positive, the team at Traffic Jams can help. Contact us today by emailing us at sales@trafficjams.com or calling us at (855)599-9998.
