Don’t Delete Negative Comments
Nothing will speed a customer through the stages of unhappy to infuriated faster than having their comments deleted from your website or social media pages. If there’s one thing you never want to do, it’s to make an already unhappy customer even more unhappy.
If someone is unhappy or even angry enough to post something negative on your social media page and you delete that comment, you are going to invoke a number of other negative feelings that will encourage them to speak even louder. They are already in a negative state. You are going to add to that, making them feel like you are trying to silence them. You are also going to make them feel like they are unimportant. And most of all, you are going to make them feel like you are doing this to them because you have something you want to hide. At this point they are not only going to want to explode at you, they want to expose you to everyone they can. They will go to other sites, write on blogs, send out email, and do whatever they can to not only speak about their problem, but to broadcast how badly you’ve treated them because they reported their problem.
Negative comments need to be dealt with. As was mentioned in the sections above, you should try to use these situations as opportunities to show off your customer service skills. Let other people see you working to resolve the problem. You will build trust and loyalty.
Don’t Wait For A Crisis
The more proactive you are when it comes to your company’s online reputation, the better the results you will have. Keeping an eye on your reputation and being proactive about it will actually help you to deal with a crisis if one does occur. With a strong reputation under you already, it’s much easier to undo any damage that might come out of a sudden unforeseen problem.
The reverse is also true. If you wait for a big problem to come up before you start reacting, you will have nothing to back you up. Digging yourself out of the hole will be a much harder task.
Management of your online reputation is an ongoing process. It needs to be monitored consistently. Exactly how much effort it takes will depend on the size of your business. Some might be able to check in on things once a month and not worry about much else. Others might need to run searches and scans weekly, or even daily. Being consistent and proactive are the keys to keeping things under control and avoiding unexpected surprises.
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