You can’t make everyone happy every time. No matter how good your products are. No matter how exceptional your customer service team might be.
So give unsatisfied customers a place to voice negative comments, writes social media consultant and speaker Drew Goodman on Social Media Today. Allowing criticisms to be posted on the brand Facebook page, for instance, provides complaining customers with a platform to let you know (and, yes, everyone else, too) that something is amiss. But how can that be a good thing?
Negative comments are opportunities for engagement.
A customer’s public complaint on social outposts, like a blog or Facebook page, also provides you the opportunity to react positively (and, yes, publicly) to rectify the situation. If done professionally and correctly, it will transform the complaining customer into an online influencer and let stakeholders know you care about customers.
Have you been on either end of a social media customer care interaction? What was your experience?
Absolitely, Amy. In fact, a good exmaple of this is ILD Teleservices, an alternative payment processor, leveraged negative online comments to innovate and launched the first of its kind online self help customer service center back in 2009, which has yielded high use. Unlike other transaction processors, where inquiries are handled only in writing or by phone, requiring the agent to manually service the consumer, the company, ILD’s customer service portal allowed the consumer to take charge of its service experience directly from ILD’s website. Great article.
Amy, you’ve hit the nail on the head. Not only should you not fear the complainer, you should give them a place to complain- a public place. Many businesses fear social media because they see it as a place where negative comments from customers are aired out in front of all their customers. That is actually a good thing for several reasons:
1.) You are giving them a place to come and make their complaint, rather than you, as the business, having to find other places on the internet where they are making a complaint.
2.) You not only can work with the customer to resolve the complaint, but you can show all your other customers that you are serious about customer service.
http://3gsocialmedia.blogspot.com/2011/08/give-your-customers-place-to-be.html
Nice article.
Drew