The first response to finding negative things written about one’s organization online is to take a deep breath and to remember to not take the negative comments personally. The second step is to consider the positive aspects of the comments:
1) Your organization is important enough in the writer’s life that s/he is motivated to write about you. Maybe you worried that no one was paying attention to you or that no one cared about your service—worry no longer.
2) The writer has just provided you with useful information about how your organization is perceived by at least one user. You didn’t even have to design and distribute a survey to elicit this information—take it, use it—it may be valuable.
3) I can’t remember where I read this, so can’t give credit to the author, but…people form their impressions of the quality of an organization’s customer service not just from the initial interaction, but even more strongly from watching how an organization responds to a complaint. You now have a golden opportunity to serve and perhaps even impress not just one disgruntled customer, but also everyone who is watching the interaction online. It is therefore important to consider your response to the negative comments from a broad viewpoint. What do you want to tell your customers/users/patrons about your organization’s values and attitudes? How you approach the situation will tell them far more than just the words you use.
It’s also important to carefully examine the comment itself. Does it include factual errors? Provide accurate information. Does it seem to be based on faulty assumptions about what your organization does? Explain how your organization works. Does it point out a problem that you can fix with more information, a replacement item, or another response on the spot? Make the offer to fix it. If the comment doesn’t provide enough information for you to determine how to respond, ask for more feedback from the user and begin a conversation.
Finally, you need to consider how to distribute your response. Using the same medium as the initial comment makes sense; whether it was Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube, those who saw the initial complaint are more likely to see your response if you reply in the same place and with the same level of commitment to the conversation. In other words, if someone posts a funny video on YouTube complaining about your customer service, posting a written comment below their video is not an adequate response. You need to create your own video, demonstrating what you can do to solve the problem they have pointed out, and post it on YouTube, where people who viewed the first video can find yours too.
