Being Geek Chic is the yammerings of a Midwestern nerd named Elizabeth Giorgi. My vision impairment is real, which is frustrating because I really would like to see a 3D movie.
Send questions, requests and ideas to [email protected]. Please put your complaints on a napkin and toss it.
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Note
16th November 2011
Responding to negative comments in social media
At my full time gig, I run into a lot of crazy stuff on our social media accounts. There’s the spammers, the disgruntled users, the small businesses looking to find customers and myriad other things. One of those most difficult issues we face though is how to handle negative comments.
In social spaces, good and bad discussions are visible to the world. It’s easy to accept and even celebrate the good comments. It’s hard to embrace the bad, but it’s critical that you do. A disgruntled customer can quickly create a digital mob scene on your wall, so here’s some guidelines that I use to handle it.
Listening is key. Just like in real life, when you are having an issue in a restaurant, store, at work, wherever, you don’t want your voice to go unheard. If I were to interrupt our users in real life, they’d probably want to slap me. You need to read these negative comments and absorb the information.
Once you’ve listened, communicate that you’ve read the comment and are working towards addressing the problem or finding a solution. You don’t enjoy the added value of body language and non-verbal communication online that you do in a real life conversation, so you need to be more deliberate in these forums.
Next, truly try to address the issue and if possible, take the conversation offline. A simple post saying, “could you please email Amy at [email protected] or call her at ###-###-#### to resolve your issue” when you have an answer. Other users see that you have resolved the issue, but it allows you to work out any minor details without cluttering your wall or Facebook feed. Plus, it’s very easy for a twitter conversation to feel impersonal, whereas a voice to voice conversation easily allows you to lower any tension.
Of course, the trolls will be trolls. It can be difficult to know how to deal with these characters, however, I would never ignore them. You may not address every single post, but check in occasionally with a “thank you for letting us know” kind of remark just to acknowledge the comments.
How do you deal with negative comments in social media?
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emilybrennanmediablog reblogged this from beinggeekchic and added:
media has always been quite a hot button issue....control (right, ChapStick?)
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beinggeekchic posted this
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