I often get asked about best practices for dealing with online critics. Hopefully, you’re not dealing with someone as persistent in their complaints as Hasan Syed. When Mr. Syed believed British Airways was ignoring both a case of lost luggage and his tweets about it, he bought a promoted–or paid tweet–to air his dissatisfaction with British Airways. Mr. Syed’s tweet went viral. Eventually, Mr. Syed’s complaint reached at least 50,000 people on Twitter and thousands, if not millions, more via retweets, British television reports and the internet. Only after suffering that wave of negative earned media did British Airways finally apologize online and reach out to Mr. Syed offline.
In the brave new world of viral communications, you need to stay in front online complaints. A recent article (free registration req’d) by David Barkholz in Automotive News outlines what I have found to be spot-on advice for dealing with negative online comments about your brand or business:
- Use commonly available software to monitor the Internet for mentions of brand or business, good and bad. You also might want to monitor mentions of the names of key employees.
- Don’t admit guilt. Instead, apologize for the customer’s inconvenience or difficulty, and make an attempt to put things right.
- Do respond to negative comments and reviews, but attempt to do it offline so as to avoid a public battle or flame war. Consider things like a tweet or blog comment that apologizes for the inconvenience, and provides the customer with a method to contact you directly to discuss further action.
- Encourage happy customers to leave positive reviews on both social media and traditional review sites. Research shows that the vast majority of customers are satisfied, but that, predictably, satisfied customers rarely post about their experiences.
While not foolproof, following these four steps will help you to effectively diffuse online criticism–and avoid potential legal liability for rash responses.