While we all know that social media presents so many great opportunities for business growth, we often don’t think about how we can use negative comments to our advantage. If you plan ahead and know how you will engage with these types of posts, you’ll not only save time, but will publicly show how your brand values and responds to feedback. Here are three ways negative social media comments can help your brand.
Provide Timely Customer Service
Plenty of organizations rave about their customer service abilities, so it’s important that this extends into social media. A negative comment, post or review gives your brand an opportunity to not only share how your customer service is superior to you competitors, but to also respond quickly. This is really advertising that no amount of money can really buy. By responding within a short time frame — one to two hours, but quicker if possible — you’ll showing your customers that you’re listening online.
Pro Tip: Use preapproved responses to your advantage. Run them through your compliance team ahead of time so you’re able to respond quickly. If you know your brand will receive comments from an event, etc., plan ahead as much as you can by preparing responses.
Improve Products and Services
It’s a good rule of thumb to remember that if a certain business aspect, product, etc. bothers one of your customers enough to leave a negative comment online, they likely aren’t alone. Their post could in fact tip you off to an area needing critical improvement. Use this as an opportunity to not only learn, but to also improve services.
Pro Tip: Know how you will you escalate product and service comments and emergencies. By having team in place, you can make sure you’re efficient and accurate in your responses.
Increase Loyalty and Leads
Contrary to a lot of advice, deleting negative comments is not good practice. In fact, your cover up could get worse than the incident itself; remember it’s likely that someone has seen a post before you delete it. On top of this, the original commenter could be provoked into leaving more harmful posts on your accounts.
Pro Tip: Negative comments will ultimately happen. Your customers and leads are watching how you respond to them. Remember that you can turn a negative into a positive by showing empathy and providing a solution to your customers’ frustrations. Your leads will take note.
Want more tips on how to respond to your customers and leads on social media? Check out our webinar Planning Social Media Responses.
