Business masterclass: dealing with online complaints and criticisms

22nd
MAR

Business masterclass: dealing with online complaints and criticisms

Posted by Michael under Entrepreneur Resources, Search, Social Media

It can destroy a business – the moment when you realise that somebody, somewhere has something bad to say about you. For Arclid Transport, this week, it’s the emergence of a video on YouTube that appears to show one of their lorries pushing a car along a motorway at 60 mph. The video was taken in January and the police were informed at the time, but have reopened the enquiry as a result of public and media attention.

So what do you do if something bad turns up about you on the net, or on social media?

Be objective – Assess the situation. Has your organisation done anything to deserve the commentary, complaint or coverage that you’re getting? While it’s both easy and natural to leap to your own defence, it may be better to stop, think and redress any problems at the same time as reacting. If there’s any grounds to the complaint, deal with them using three simple stages:
• Accept – admit where there has been a problem
• Explain – if there is a reason for the problem that might change people’s view of the situation (serious illness in your call-handling team? A transport strike making import of components impossible and therefore slowing up your deliveries?) state it simply and honestly, without making excuses
• Act – say what you are doing to solve the problem, and thank people for bringing it to your attention.
Maybe you can’t say a great deal, but you can at least thank the poster for their comment and say that you’re getting in touch with them through other channels to find out more about their situation and how you can put things right.

Request removal – Unfair or defamatory commentary exists and you can contact the forum moderator or site owner and ask for its removal. Many will work with you on this, but some won’t and in those cases, and if the commentary is totally untrue, you may want to take legal advice. Remember that ‘ghost’ versions of internet pages can exist in caches and you may also need to ask search engines to implement Content Removal Request for you.

Ignore the problem – this seems insane, but it can happen that you can’t get rid of bad publicity. It might be that an internet site is owned by the friend of the complainant, for example and so they just won’t take bad material down. In this case you’re better off putting your energy into the process of smothering bad commentary in good. You can do this by asking your loyal customers to post good reviews on Facebook and LinkedIn and on trade-based directories like FreeIndex. This stops bad comments being at the top of the list when people search for information about you.

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