According to a survey conducted by Opinion Research for the Chubb Group of Insurance Cos., and released on MediaPost, 20% of social media users have shared negative brand experiences online. This number is pretty significant if it is scalable. Just on Facebook alone that means 80 million of their 400 million (and rapidly growing) users have complained about a negative brand or service experience online and that’s not including the millions of Bloggers, Tweeters, Yelpers, and other social network users are out there.
With so much volume of negative experience and complaints, it’s safe to say that almost all businesses that deal with the consumer have been or will be mentioned in social media. Whether your business is a telecommunications giant like AT&T or a small sandwich shop if you have consumers then you need to be aware of what’s being said about you in social media.
Listening and engaging for customer service should be the first step. This can be accomplished with a social media monitoring solution and is a great way to get started. Take a look at a previous blog post for a few reasons to engage your customers and some tips on how to handle negative comments in social media.
The next step would be to look at the nature of the complaints and see what you can do to fix the problems. Ask a few questions. For example, is the incident isolated to a specific location or geographic area? Are the complaints primarily coming from a certain demographic? Is there a flaw in your product or service that customers have found? This is where you need to go beyond simple listening and explore a social media intelligence solution to answer these complex questions.
It’s inevitable that your brand or service will be mentioned on social media one day, if you’re in charge of a larger brand then most likely you’re already experiencing some negative feedback. What’s important is that you make the most of the available information and not only use it to provide great customer service, but make smart decisions for the future of your business or brand.
