Legitimate Complaints vs. "Hater" Comments: Responding to Negative Feedback on Social Media

This post is meant to be read with the post about improving customer relations by responding to negative feedback.

No matter what your organization produces or works toward, there will always be a few envious attention-seekers who want to get famous, by bringing you down. These people are what my generation calls “haters”; they do not have a valid reason to complain about your company, but they do it anyway. Basically, their comments will go along the lines of:

“[Your company name] SUCKS!!! I HATE THEM!! LET’S GO BREAK [your name]’S LEGS!!!”

Or the slightly more conniving:

“[Your company name] has terrible practices. They beat their workers. They’re worse than [insert a dictator’s name].”

At the end of the day, some of the most financially successful and ethically sound companies in the world, fall victim to millions of “hater” remarks. However, rarely is there any benefit in responding to these sorts of comments, with more than a canned apology. Even if their facts are wrong, telling them this can only spark more anger; the last thing you want is to start a social media war that polarizes your customers. And unfortunately, despite your best intentions, the public almost always sides with the “underdog” consumer.

Most people will not go any further after you respond with an apology. If they decide to continue to barrage your page with hate, simply remove their comments- why keep such negativity on your page?

Occasionally though, it is difficult to discern between hater comments and legitimate complaints; there can often be something genuine masked in the curse words of spur-of-the-moment rage. Here are a few guidelines on the differences between hater comments and legitimate complaints:

• Hater comments question the operations of your company in an angry and irrational way.
• Legitimate complaints are about the product or experience that your company provides. This may include questioning the operations of your company, but only if it is directly related to their experience (e.g. “you need to train your customer service representatives more effectively”)

• Both can sound angry at first.
• Haters will continue to be angry, even after you sympathize and apologize.

• Legitimate complaints can either be public or private (e.g. email or phone)
• Haters like attention and will always try to humiliate you publically

• Legitimate complaints talk about your flaws in a candid, no-nonsense sort of way. Even if their complaints are long, every sentence is related to their own experience. 
• Haters go out of their way to insult you or your company, often on a personal level. They like to insert underhanded jabs at your company, for no good reason

• Legitimate complaints talk about themselves and how their own experience was bad.
• Haters talk about you and how you are bad.

All in all, just remember: haters gonna hate. 

Improving Customer Relationships by Responding to Negative Feedback

Negative feedback is inevitable, no matter how strong your brand and products are. Now, with the advent of social media, companies are bombarded with complaints through Facebook and Twitter. What's different about the social media complaints is that the customer's comment and your interactions with them is public. Anyone in the world can see the professionalism, sympathy, and service mindset that you demonstrate.

However, few brands take advantage of this powerful tool to show that you care about your customers. Most companies refuse to make a tiny investment of time to respond to these comments and improve customers' experiences exponentially.

This is your opportunity to set yourself apart. Ask select employees and even executives to take 15 minutes every day to log onto Twitter or Facebook, to respond to feedback and solve others' problems. Interns and co-ops who have shown a thorough understanding of your brand, can complete this simple task as well. Here are the steps that responses should follow:

1. Apologize and sympathize

Customers are usually decidedly furious when things go wrong in their experience with your company. Calm them down and let them know that you understand and care.

2. Ask how you can fix the problem

Ask for all the specific details you will need to fix the problem. Try to find these out all at once, rather than continuously going back to ask for more details.

3. Demonstrate a sense of urgency

The worst mistake in customer service is making the customer feel like you're nonchalant about their issue. Act quickly and give them updates on your progress if solving their problem will take more than 3 days. Go to every extreme to ensure that they are satisfied.

4. Offer them a gift to apologize for the inconvenience

This should be done whether the problem is solved or not. The gift can be a coupon, store credit, or a specific item.

5. Thank them for the complaint

Appreciate the fact that they helped you improve your product, by pointing out a flaw.

In addition, it is important to differentiate between legitimate negative feedback and what I like to call "hater" comments (here is a post on how to distinguish the difference). Respond only to legitimate complaints.

All in all, when you respond to negative feedback, customers are taken aback by how much you care- after all, they've likely never had a good experience with customer service, especially through social media. Nike+ responds to all tweets that "mention" them. They congratulate me when I tweet about my runs and when my sensor stopped working, they tried to help. Even though they weren't able to fix it, I was impressed enough with their dedication to me, that I will be a loyal customer for years to come. That means thousands in revenues for them, from a few simple tweets.

Social media- just do it.

The Ultimate Guide to Creating Social Media Buzz: A Word-of-Mouth Portal

Intertwined in our nature is this inherent need to share. We need to talk to people about the weather, what we had for breakfast, and what we did over the weekend.

Now, the main goal of a social media marketer is to capitalize on this irresistible urge to talk. We hope to harvest brands that are resonant enough to talk about, then convince our customers to chatter away.

First of all, the buzz generates great brand recognition . More importantly though, you can spend millions on traditional advertising but no matter who you are, consumers trust what their friends say about your brand, more than what you say about your brand. When a customer talks positively about your product on Facebook, they tell 500+ friends that buying from you is a sound decision.

As soon as your brand harnesses the power of sharing, you are able to showcase your best characteristics to the entire world. Here are The Art of Glow's best posts on promoting social media buzz:

1. Making Customers and Supporters Proud to Share Your Brand
2. Creating Funny and Interesting Experiences that Translate Into Good Stories
3. Using Tangible Rewards and Incentives to Promote Word-of-Mouth
4. Making it Easy for Brand Advocates to Share

An Easy Way to Boost Social Media Word-of-Mouth

Customers are lazy people; there are not many of them who will go out of their way to aid your brand, unless there is a large enough incentive to do so. We've taken care of the incentive in previous posts about making customers proud to support your brand and creating experiences that translate into good stories. So let's move onto the easier portion: removing the part where the customer has to go out of their way to support you.

Clearly, more people will share if you make it convenient for them. For example, Nike+ GPS, Nike's latest running app, allows users to automatically share the details of their latest run. So users feel the pride of publicizing their fitness and it's easy for them to do so.

On the other hand, while automated sharing can be convenient, status updates or tweets that sound canned do not resonate. Allow users to customize their sharing, in order to let their own authenticity shine through. If this is not practical, add a little bit of flair or personality to the automatic sharing.

Once you integrate some programming that makes sharing easy, you'll be well on your way to achieving the buzz that you've been looking for.

For more posts on promoting social media buzz, go to the sharing portal.

Creating Social Media Buzz with Tangible Rewards for Sharing

Tangible motivators are popular amongst today's "social media experts" for a few reasons.

First of all, there is a clear and definite correlation between the value of your reward and number of "likes" or "follows" your brand gets. If you guarantee users who "like" your page, a coupon or voucher, naturally, more people will "like" your page. Don't get too excited though because with these extrinsic motivators, you zap the element of engagement from the "like". You do not forge an emotional connection with the person, robbing you of precious brand loyalty and advocacy. In fact, if the customer is actually captivated by your brand, an extrinsic reward downplays the value of this relationship. It's almost like your friend paying you to do a good deed- it takes away all of the intrinsic value.

Also, tangible rewards require little creativity; it's just coupons, a "chance to win an iPad", or access to content. I'm not saying that innovation cannot exist in tangible rewards; it's very possible. However, it's not very abundant in today's social media situation.

Despite all this criticism that I have, tangible benefits do have a place in social media marketing plans. Tangible rewards are effective if they are given to loyal customers unexpectedly. This unexpectedness does not render the customer relationship meaningless; if they are unexpected, they are more like gifts of thanks for being loyal, rather than benefits to remain loyal. Also, these unexpected gifts can be combined with exclusive closed groups to maximize their power.

Moreover, a short-term campaign based on tangible rewards, can be viable for small brands that need a period of viral buzz. If executed correctly, this can explode brand recognition. On the other hand, be careful with this sort of campaign because customers may become "addicted" to your reward and flock away quickly if it is withdrawn. To combat this, ensure that your rewards are short-term or offered on an infrequent basis. As well, during and after you withdraw the rewards, present another meaningful way for the customer to connect and reap benefits from your brand (some sort of an engagement campaign).

Last but not least, occasionally, businesses need to boost the number of "likes" their page has, in order to "legitimize" the page. A tangible reward can do this very quickly.

All in all, it is generally a good idea to stay away from tangible rewards but every once in awhile, they may be able to supplement more meaningful marketing.

For more posts on promoting social media buzz, go to the sharing portal.

How to Ignite Word-of-Mouth for Your Brand on Facebook and Oher Social Media

One of the most attractive facets of Facebook marketing campaigns is the massive word-of-mouth potential. However, a vast majority of promotion on Facebook does not take advantage of the most efficient platform for sharing, in the world.

To figure out how to spur sharing, we can go back to the roots of why Facebook is so addicting. We love Facebook because it is an opportunity to show our true colors to a network of people who are interested in them. If you have Facebook, you know what you share: status updates often detail your accomplishments of the day, you might post your child's graduation photos, and you may put your political or religious views in your information section.

The common denominator of all these items is that you are proud to showcase them to the world. Why do people spend time filling out their favorite bands, movies, and athletes on their profiles? Because they're proud to show how unique and special their preferences are.

Clearly, the best way to trigger word-of-mouth on Facebook, is to position your product in a way that your customers can be proud to use it.

Nike + iPod (a device that tracks and shares running statistics) users are proud to share the fact that they are avid users because it gives them the image of being fit and determined.

Meanwhile, charity donors love to flaunt their generosity and restaurant-goers like to show off their good tastes.

All of these people would take pride in sharing their love of a specific brand on Facebook. How can your brand make customers feel the same way?

For more posts on promoting social media buzz, go to the sharing portal.