How To Respond To Negative Feedback Online

In this video, Luke and Susannah discuss best practises for dealing with negative feedback online.

Today we’re going to be talking about reputation management as it pertains to social media. Susannah previously managed a social media monitoring company and this experience has made her extremely knowledgeable in this area.

Unfortunately, people don’t go online to say positive things very often, that the nature of the beast. A lot of people who have a negative experience go away and stew, then twelve hours later, they go online and write a negative review.

Why is reputation management important?

It’s important to have a strategy in place so that you can respond appropriately and not add fuel to the fire. You could have some stock responses, although its not recommended to use them in every single case.

It’s important to remember that everything you say is visible to the public, so you don’t want to react negatively and give your company a bad name. People will judge your company on the way you treat your customer.

Why is it important to respond in a timely fashion?

Things can spiral and get out of control quickly, so its best to respond sooner rather than later.

How to respond to negative comments

Always respond in a helpful manner. Consider any negative comments as valuable feedback to take away and perhaps improve your product or service. At the end of the day customers just want to be heard, they want to know you understand their problem and are willing to help.

Precautions

Most social media platforms have a profanity filter to censor any explicit language, as well as a spam filter. It’s also really important to regularly check your social media channels for negative comments so you can resolve any issues as fast as possible.

Another tip is to not delete comments as this will often anger people more and find other ways to paint your company in a negative light.