Are Unhappy Customers Damaging Your Brand Online? What Can You Do About It?

Anybody can write anything, at anytime about your brand online.

Sometimes they will have good things to say and you benefit from positive word-of-mouth. Yay! 🙂

Sometimes they will have bad things to say, and these comments can damage your brand. Boooo! 🙁

What can you do to minimise the damage to your brand?

There are 2 simple steps:

1. Get notified whenever comments are made about your brand online
2. Write an official response using a method that turns a negative comment into a positive that is 10 times more powerful

Two ways to get notified whenever comments are made about your brand online

• Sign up to Google Alerts so you are emailed whenever your brand is talked about online.
• Sign up for Twitter.
  1. Search Twitter for your brand name eg “Coca Cola” or “Vodafone“
  2. Copy the url into Feed My Inbox.  You will get emailed up to once a day whenever someone mentions your brand name
  3. Respond promptly to both negative and positive comments

How to write an official response using a method that turns a negative comment into a positive that is 10 times more powerful

1. Your first reaction will to make an excuse “That only happened because blah blah blah”. They don’t want to hear your excuses. Fight the urge to make excuses, because making excuses is starting a fight. It tells the customer that you’re not listening and that you don’t care. Getting into a fight with a customer either online or face to face is a really bad idea, so don’t make excuses.
2. Realise that they are just upset because they were expecting to have a good time, but something went wrong and now they are lashing out in frustration, and, unfortunately, you are the easiest target. Don’t take it personally. They’re just having a bad day, give them some slack.
3. They really want just 3 things from you. And if you give them these 3 things they will love you for it. They will love you because most of the time they complain, no-one listens to them. So here are the 3 things they want from you: A) Acknowledgment, B) Apology, C) A promise of Action.
   1. So first, acknowledge them; “thank you for your feedback Joe Bloggs”. Easy.
   2. Next, apologise for their negative experience. But it wasn’t your fault was it? It doesn’t matter whose fault it was, apologise anyway. You can say “I’m sorry you had such a disappointing experience when xyz happened”.
   3. Next, address their issue or concern and describe the changes you are going to make (or even better “have made”) so it won’t happen again. Like this “We are making changes this week to ensure this doesn’t happen again to you or anyone else”

Trust me, if you do these 3 things you will blow their minds.

They will think “Wow, they really cared about what I had to say!”, “They are true professionals!”, “I helped make that place better!” and they feel a warm glow.

But the real magic happens afterwards: Hundreds of other people will read their complaint and then read your professional response.

They will think “Wow, look at the way the team responded to that whinger, they really listen and care! I’m going there!”

Download a pdf version of this method (13Kb .pdf)

Do you need help to monitor your brand online?

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