How can you effectively respond to critical user feedback about your brand?

Social media is a two-way communication channel, which is why people expect to be responded to. Removing comments can actually cause more problems. Instead, you now have an opportunity to collect feedback and develop an action plan. One you understand the reoccurring themes, develop a protocol and blueprint answers for consistency.

Acknowledging that you received a message that requires an answer should happen as soon as possible. But that doesn't mean you have to provide the complete answer right away. Better to answer correctly and sensitively and that can take time.

Top brands respond within an hour and sometimes within minutes. Even if you don't have a full answer, responding with an acknowledgement that you've received the message and are working on a response is helpful and shows the customer you care.

It's important to address critical feedback as soon as possible to ensure your customer doesn't get even more frustrated than they already are. It's likely they've already tried emailing your team without any response and their last resort is reaching out via social media (not always the case, though!). If someone is angry and frustrated without hearing a response from the brand, it's likely they will comment back to others interacting with your page—giving those audience members a negative experience—or looking for other ways to speak negatively about the brand. Timing is so important.

Make sure to answer the customer in the channel on which they contacted you. No one has ever called a contact center and had the agent ask that they instead send their comment or complaint to social media, so in social media we shouldn't send people to the phone or email.

To your customer, you are not a representative of the company. You ARE the company. So own it. Be the CEO of the moment. Take it personally. Take it professionally. Take it responsibly. Just don’t take it at home. The customer may not always be right. But the customer is ALWAYS YOUR customer. Listen and allow the customer to vent. Angry customers generally will not listen to or accept your apology until they have an opportunity to voice their frustrations. And listen to their complaints with the intent to take action, not to give an explanation. To a customer, when something is wrong, your explanation is an excuse. Customers want action, not excuses. Listen empathetically, apologize, and do whatever it takes to resolve the problem

Remember users are human too. When a user is made to feel like their input is valued, they will have more substance to work with when speaking to others about their overall experience with you. In your response to critical feedback, you always have an opportunity to better the situation.

Tools like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Buffer, or others can make the process of monitoring much easier. You can sort through your mentions and keywords, identify which require responses, and ensure they get the attention they deserve. It is also helpful to be able to go back and see what you've said to people in the past and what the outcome was.

A customer complaint is a gift. Take the perspective that your customers complain because they want to help your business. Otherwise, they would say nothing and walk away, intent on never returning. The customer may not always be right. But the customer is ALWAYS YOUR customer. Apologize and do whatever it takes to fix the problem. When you do, your customers will feel emotionally happy, loyally returning, spending more money, and raving to others on social media.

A lot of organizations fail to integrate with their customer service teams, which is a big mistake. Unless the social media employee is forwarding on complaints to the appropriate departments, they should have access to upload complaints to the organization's CRM, so that it can be pulled into the correct data pools when business teams are reviewing areas of improvement. Social media is also a gift in that the feedback can be gathered in the customer's exact words, rather than being filtered through an employee.

These rules do not apply to trolls. If someone is unwilling to take the conversation offline or into a DM, or if they continually badger you despite receiving an answer, you don't have to reply, you can delete the comments, and you can block them.

Last week I opened an account with an investment platform. The experience was a nightmare. There were huuuge gaps between the service delivery and CX. Names of portfolios advised by my broker were different from what I saw on screen. Their customer support link never worked. The investment process had challenges at every stage. In case you wanted to edit, customer profile could not be viewed. After a few days of trying I gave up. The icing on the cake !!! I tried to contact the co-founders over Linked in. One of them viewed my profile, so obviously he has seen my message to him. But he did not bother to respond. The second Co founder did not even bother. Itwas evident that they were more interested in the customer’s money than the CX.