One Day It'll All Make Cents

For many brands the reason not to enter the world of social media is a basic one; they cannot control the message and fear that someone might tell the world they suck.  Is this rational? Customers have been complaining about bad service, bad experiences forever so what’s different about social media? Well the reach is potentially larger but besides that nothing so it doesn’t make sense to ignore social media as larger reach is also obviously a good thing for you.  But lets go back, so someone on twitter says you suck, how do you handle that?

Well the first thing you need to do is ascertain if you do really suck? Is the complaint legitimate? Have we heard it before?  Social media doesn’t create the complaint it is simply a venue for someone to vent their frustration usually because they have not found a satisfying result anyplace else.  Social media provides invaluable customer information that would take a lot of resources to get otherwise,  So use it!

Earmuffs don’t work

Here’s the dirty little secret about people that complain loudly, generally all they want is some sort of acknowledgement and if they get it they often go from being adversaries to advocates.  According to this study only about 30% of companies will contact a twitter user making a complaint about them but of those users who were contacted 32% loved it and 51.5% liked it.  Whats the difference between loved and liked? I have no idea but both are positive so lets not get wrapped up in semantics here, I’m trying to help you! The point is just putting on earmuffs and acting like you can’t hear the bad words is no solution but by engaging people you have the opportunity to make real impact.

Some people really do just like complaining

While engagement will work with most people, rational people, there are some who just like complaining and there isn’t much you can do to satisfy them.  We all know someone who will complain about everything and there isn’t really anything you can do to change their opinion.  This a small group and you should be able to tell if the complainer falls into this category by looking at their timeline.  You can try to engage them or have them move the conversation to another venue like a customer service rep but chances are their opinions probably aren’t taken that seriously so it is ok to say let’s agree to disagree.  Plus we have the brilliant Louis CK to mock them.