COMMENTS
This is oh so true from personal experience. What I have found rewarding is taking the customer complaint, sorting it out and then getting a positive tweet back.
These conversations go on with or without you.
Having the opportunity to listen and correct a mistake is well worth doing, as you'll get a brand advocate at the end of it.
Problem is too many brands are too nervous of taking that step...
Many folks I talk with concerned that publishing a blog will open them up for on line bashing. My personal experience is much different. Most people are fair and balanced and reasonable. Overt bashing reflects poorly on the individual who posts. Managing comments in the fashion describes shows the CHARACTER of the company. Any opportunity to showcase the intangibles is usually a benefit.
Complaining about something and actually getting a response that takes your complaint seriously is a wonderful experience. I recently tried a software package out and without all the details the response from the company as I struggled to use their free trial was quite unique. I actually e-mailed asking how I could kill my trial (there was no obvious way) so I would get no more e-mail etc.
I got a personal message from the President of the company showing compassion with my frustration and offering solutions...and he was ready to close my trial if I wanted.
In the end I persisted, entered into a dialogue with him personally by e-mail, have given him candid and detailed feedback at his request and have continued to use the product.
A completely different result because this person took my criticism at face value and invested time and effort to correct what I felt was wrong. I'll be talking to him soon and am now promoting his product to colleagues.
What you're saying is that it pays to be humble - and I agree. Our pride tends to come to the forefront when we're criticized but this can be defused by letting the critic know you hear them and are taking their criticism into consideration.
Good post. Yelp is the worst offender when it comes to treating the small biz owner fairly. Don't believe me? Then consider this! I have hundreds, yes hundreds, of fair reviews on the net. Yet Yelp only has two reviews of my business and they are both terrible and unjustified. In fact, I have good evidence that one is from a competitor! Anyway, I responded to both of the reviews in a professional manner. I also ask my customers to leave reviews, good or bad. Many customers have told me they have left reviews (dozens in fact) yet Yelp won't publish them! When I contacted Yelp they responded with some canned response and blamed it on their "algorithm". So, the result is that I get page views every day at Yelp and the visitors are only seeing two lousy reviews! Stay aay from Yelp!
Seems like good advice for 'real life' as well!
All that were pointed out were true. Maintaining before a personal blog makes me realize that some people are not really criticizing you 'positively' but rather more on venting out about their problems. But most common mistakes is that they do not feel like apologizing even if they know they are wrong which continuously giving them negative reputation on the net.
I wonder if someone from BP is reading this. :)
I wonder if someone from BP is reading this. :)
BP is not reading this blog!
This blog posting points out a great opportunity very few on-line marketers understand. Seize the opportunity to improve your brand or company image when one shares a fatal flw in the operations!
The BP comment was meant as a joke, William. They could use some of this advice to manage the PR disaster and flood of criticism - in their case, well-deserved.
Great blog post, very interesting, thanks.
Robert
Hi Charlotte! I added the communispace blog to my rss reader. :)
If only more large organizations thought like this. I deal with this issue on a daily basis so I was happy to see this post come through. The last part about seizing the opportunity is, in my eyes, the most important point here... Especially in larger organizations, when a conversation is taking place around a brand online it's important to make a decision to get involved quickly. Sometimes, with large companies, there's so much red tape to navigate that it takes a week to get to a decision... And we all know that by that time it's already too late.
We all experience criticism, we just have to handle them politely. We can accept the thing we do wrong & apologize, we can take a stand for we believe in but we should make sure that we do it with offending anyone.