How to respond to customer comments online

A look at some great (and not so great) brand-related social media responses, and what we can learn from them

Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash

Working with customer feedback and responding to negative reviews is essential when the purchase decisions of potential clients are at stake. According to Bazaarvoice research, 41% of consumers say that seeing brands respond to reviews makes them believe the company really cares about their customers, while 7 out of 10 consumers changed their opinion about a brand after they saw a brand response to a review.

Given the wealth of tools for brand monitoring and social media management, it might seem easy enough to stay in touch with the customers 24/7. But the truth is that a lot of businesses constantly take hits to their online reputation due to the way they communicate with their audience on social media. So, what are the main reasons for these dialogue spiralling into reputation crises?

Here are some examples and tips to help brands work out how to talk to their customers online.

Avoid automated answers

After dealing with reviews and comments for a while, it might be easy to forget that there are real people behind those profiles who are expecting to be treated as, well, humans. In moments like these, it helps to remember your experience with on-hold messages on hot lines and how they made you feel. An automated response has the same effect, whereas an individual approach is always valued and has a much higher chance of building customer loyalty for your brand.

This response from a hotel doesn’t contain the name of the author who wrote the review and doesn’t touch on any specifics of their stay, which makes it come across as rather cold

And, when you scroll down, you can see the same message again and again, which doesn’t really paint a picture of ‘hospitality’

After what we’ve seen above, it might be difficult to believe that the hotel is really eager to improve

Now compare that with this response from another hotel:

This example of a highly-personalised response earns this hotel oodles of reputation points

But don’t get too personal

Showing a human side doesn’t mean it is okay to let your emotions overwhelm you, regardless of how rude the comments get. This seems to be a very common case with online arguments. Even if you feel that the person you are dealing with is aggressive or their claims have no grounds, it’s important to stick to your role of a brand representative. No company should insult its clients.

Losing your temper never helps to resolve customer issues

After this answer, the author edited the original review to include their response to the company, which made it 3 times longer and generated a lot of attention from other Yelp users.

The full review has another 240 words!

Don’t delay your response

A speedy response is crucial for customer communications on social media. In Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers, customer service keynote speaker and author Jay Baer says that, today, only 32% of customers are satisfied with brands’ response times. While most people would like to see a response within an hour, in 63% of cases, they have to wait for over 24 hours.

To show that your company really cares, you need to respond at least within a day to both positive and negative client feedback.

Don’t delete negative reviews

Given the public nature of social media, it always pays off to show how you handled a difficult situation. It might actually improve the perception of your business and help gain more customers.

According to Revoo, 68% of consumers trust reviews more when there is a healthy spread of positive and negative opinions on a company page.

In any case, if there is something in the company that deserves bad reviews, it’s not sustainable or wise to keep deleting mentions of it, rather than actually fixing the problem.

Don’t send customers to another site

If your brand has an account on a site where you can communicate with your clients, it is only natural to use its features in full rather than asking people to write an email, message in WhatsApp or send a letter in response to a comment on social media. The client must’ve had their reasons for addressing the company through this particular channel — it might be a question of convenience, technical ability, or time. Why would you want to complicate things for people who want to get in touch?

The company invited an unhappy client to leave their complaint elsewhere

Twitter users immediately picked up on everything that was wrong with Ryanair’s response:

Note the amount of likes and shares on these comments. This is how a reputation crisis usually starts.

Here’s a response that’s unlikely to result in a trending hashtag on Twitter:

A prompt response from Sainsbury’s supermarket chain offering to fix the problem on Twitter

Check your spelling and grammar

It sounds all too obvious, but it’s painfully common to see messages from brands with typos, misspelt words and missing punctuation marks. It’s not that careless writing will immediately scare away all customers, but sometimes it might make it more difficult for people to understand what you want to say, or affect your brand’s perception in the eyes of potential clients.

People can’t help judging brands by their language

Accept criticism

This is the ultimate rule of respectful communication, and will help you to resolve difficult situations without any damage to your brand’s reputation. How does one respond to justified complaints?

Constructive answers — staying on topic, admitting mistakes, focusing on the brand’s advantages — will always serve the brand well.

Shaming the customer instead of acknowleging a problem and offering solutions to solve it doesn’t leave much room to demonstrate that this cafe cares

JetBlue Airways got to the root of the problem, apologised effectively, and then offered a hassle-free way to compensate for the inconvenience

Respond to positive comments

Some businesses only respond to negative comments and don’t thank their customers for positive feedback. This might seem rather upsetting for people who made the effort to leave a positive review.

Positive reviews are harder to get than negative ones. Showing a real appreciation for the company, they indicate that the person has gone out of their way to compliment the business. Gratitude for that would definitely be expected within a context of person-to-person interaction, and so it should be the same online. Thanking people for their feedback will not only inspire customer loyalty, but also can be used as a chance to showcase brand advantages one more time by reinforcing the positive things about customer experience.

A response that shows real customer appreciation

Use customer feedback to improve your business

Any kind of feedback is a precious source of information on how a business is performing. When it’s difficult to identify the exact processes impacting business performance, it might be a good time to hit the internet and read what people are saying about your brand. Maybe the reasons for your clients’ disappointment can be easily fixed? You might find out that your couriers are always late, your account managers are not very friendly, or you have a new competitor. This can be a perfect chance to improve.