How To Handle Negative Comments On Social Media
Kristian Downer
Marketing Strategist | Fractional CMO | LinkedIn, Meta & Google Ads | AI & Social Media Trainer |
If your business has a presence on social media, negative comments are a frustrating but inevitable part of the experience.
Whether the comments come from genuine complaints or online trolls, how you respond is an important part of your brand.
Here we look at how to deal with negative comments to strengthen your customer relationships and brand perception.
Negative comments on social media generally fall into two categories Genuine Complaints and Trolls
Genuine Complaints
If you receive a comment from a genuine customer regardless of whether their complaint is valid, you should deal with it as follows
Acknowledge the complaint
When a customer posts a genuine complaint on social media, acknowledge it promptly.
A swift response shows that you care "We're sorry to hear about your experience."
Don't comment on the issue and take it offline
The next part of your message should attempt to move the conversation offline and avoid discussing the specific issue.
By directing the discussion to private messaging or email, you also prevent public back-and-forth exchanges that could escalate the situation.
After acknowledging the complaint, you could say, "Please DM us your contact details so we can investigate this issue for you."
This combination allows you to show you care, acknowledge the customer issue and offer a potential resolution pathway without actually offering anything extra.
Responding to Trolls
The goal of dealing with trolls is to minimise the visibility and impact of the comments without falling to their level.
First of all, you have to evaluate the comment to ensure it is not a genuine complaint.
If you are confident you have a troll, you want to do what you can to control or limit the visibility. On some platforms you can delete the comment.
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On Meta you can hide the comment so only the poster and their friends can see the post, this reduces the risk of retaliation or other comments because you deleted their first post.
Whatever happens, try not to respond to the troll on their level, particularly avoid arguments, and stay in control of your emotions.
Best Practices
Here are some best practices to consider when dealing with negative social media comments.
Timeliness
Responding to negative comments quickly is crucial for controlling visibility and managing the customer experience. This can help prevent the situation from escalating and reassure the customer that their concerns are being taken seriously. Ideally, set a standard response time for addressing comments and complaints on social media, and strive to meet it consistently.
Plan Ahead
Having a predefined strategy for handling negative comments is essential for ensuring consistent and effective responses.
This plan should include clear guidelines for identifying different types of negative comments, appropriate response templates, and escalation procedures for more complex issues.
By having a solid plan in place, you can respond more efficiently and maintain a cohesive brand image.
Train Your Team
Ensure that everyone responsible for managing your social media channels is well-trained in handling negative comments.
This includes training on the brand’s tone of voice, response protocols, and techniques for de-escalating tense situations.
A well-prepared team will be more confident and effective in addressing negative feedback, leading to better outcomes for both the customer and the brand.
Review and Adapt
Regularly reviewing your response strategies and their effectiveness is key to continuous improvement. Staying adaptable ensures that your approach remains relevant and effective in an ever-changing social media landscape.
Final Tips
It’s the advice I’ve seen often and very standard. After 10 years of trading we’ve adopted a different approach. If somebody has a genuine legitimate reason to complain they will find our chat box on the website, or they will email us. Showboaters wanting to demonstrate how smart they are, or in reality how little they actually know about running a business will use social media channels or review sites like TripAdvisor. The best advice in that instance is to do what many well known & established actors do and that is never read any reviews on any for, of social media. There is only one appropriate channel for complaining and resolution and that’s a direct route. Works for us and by never looking at reviews we find we’re far ,ore chilled, and less dressed by what in the majority of cases are disgruntled people who feel compelled to write something nasty. Strangely enough the number of times a review starts “I’ve visited cyz many times and they’ve always been great where as today !!!… Strangely enough that same person never ever writes a positive review all those great times they’ve visited.
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8 个月Super advice Kristian Downer I second the importance of training your team. When I was responsible for social customer service in-house for corporates, training support to balance speed of response with accuracy and appropriateness of response were key. No one likes to feel like they are not being heard.
Experienced manager with teaching experience
8 个月Really practical advice! Not that we expect anything less from you ????