This is the recommended approach to dealing with complaints and complainers.
F-E-A-R-S
Find All Mentions
Empathy Display
Answer Publicly
Reply Only Twice
Switch Channels
Find All Mentions
We use the social.zoho dashboard for that.
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Empathy Display
Engaging in a sequence of acrimonious accusations with customers in a public, online forum never works. The business is never the perceived victor, even if they were truly in the right.
Yet back-and-forth “flame wars” are not rare. They happen a lot, and they happen because the person answering customer complaints is unable to put empathy for the customer ahead of their physiological desire to fight.
A copy and paste, canned answer rarely conveys empathy. If your customer service personnel, especially online, have any responses in their quiver of standard answers that read like robotic, pasted copy, find them and start over. Because in some cases, scripted responses can come across as bad as no response at all.
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Answer Publicly
Replying publicly is an important part of the playbook for handling social media complaints. Remember, online customer service is a spectator sport. Sure, you want to make the hater happy, but the opinions of the onlookers are the bigger prize.
Whether you’re in apology mode or responding to a positive comment, if your customer is choosing to interact with you in public, respond in the same way, at least at first. If you respond in private, you are squandering the trust capital gained by being open and transparent in how you handle customer feedback.
Regardless of who the hater is, however, I recommend responding publicly. Even if they rant and rave and call you names, you’ll answer coolly and publicly. It probably won’t change the behaviour or attitude of that one person, as it’s almost impossible to turn a crazy lemon into lemonade; the fruit is already rotten.
But by replying in public you show your temperament, your values, and your belief that all customers deserve to be heard.
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Reply Only Twice
This is the question I get most often about the hug your haters system: “What if I respond to a hater, and he replies back with something even more negative?”
It happens all the time. Social media complainers see you respond and believe they have a foil, an opponent, a punching bag. But they do not. Because you and your customer service personnel know the key to effective onstage interactions: Jay Baer’s Rule of Reply Twice.
The rule is:
Online, never reply more than twice to any one person in any single conversation.
Chad: “You guys are the absolute worst. I can’t believe you actually have the guts to accept American currency for your terrible product!”
Business: “We seem to have fallen short in your eyes, Chad. Can you tell me more about what happened, and I’ll do whatever I can to assist?”
Chad: “It won’t matter. It’s not like an idiot like you can fix all that’s wrong with this ridiculous company.”
Business: “I’m sorry you’re unhappy, and would like to help if possible. Please contact me via private message if you’d like me to give it a try.”
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Switch Channels
The truncated nature of many social communications means it may be impossible to fully address a complex complaint in only two interactions.
Second, you may need the customers’ account number or other sensitive details to assist them, and you should not ask them to expose that information in full view of the digital spectators.
So for nuanced customer interactions that require research to resolve, your goal should be to switch channels after your initial, public response to either email, FB msg or telephone but ensure that this is announced publicly so viewers know you have both been reasonable and responsive.