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Customer Complaints in a Web 2.0 World
No matter how hard you try and no matter how brilliant your service, at some point in your business life you will have customers that you have failed to satisfy. That is an inevitable fact of doing business.
The challenge is in a Web 2.0 world, they won't just tell their immediate family, they will usually post it to their Facebook friends, Tweet about it on Twitter and possibly complain in a forum about you in the process.
Your one unhappy customer has suddenly told a few thousand people. If they are really ticked off you can expect a You Tube Video or an email that could go viral and suddenly one bad experience has been seen by millions of people.
Far fetched? Well Virgin Airlines experienced this with one bad meal served to a passenger who emailed in his complaint to Virgin and cc'd his list in the process. This complaint email was forwarded to their friends, who forwarded it to their friends until ultimately it made front page news in most of the main papers and TV shows around the world ... All from one bad meal.
This is not the time to be complacent in business. Old customer complaint strategies just don't cut it anymore. Gone are the days when people will send you a nasty letter or complain in person. With Web 2.0 the world is now their complaints department and the person concerned may or may not actually tell you directly about their issue.
So, knowing at some time you will tick a customer off - what can you do about customer complaints in a Web 2.0 world?
1. Make it easy for them to complain directly to you. Sure keep some of the old traditional paper forms, but extend your website so people can contact you via the web. Angry people want instant responses - anything that takes time increases their anger level.
2. Make responses public. Many people try to sweep complaints under the carpet. In a Web 2.0 world this is the worst thing you can do. Allow comments on your company blog or newsletter - and resist the temptation to delete negative posts. The trick in managing customer complaints in Web 2.0 is how you respond to the comments.
Make sure every negative comment is replied to. Show active listening skills by validating their emotion "Yes, I can understand why you would be angry about xyz". Then move into problem solution mode. "We would like to correct this for you - I will contact you to discuss how we can fix this."
If you have a contact address then follow up with them. If you don't have a contact address then ask them to contact you and give your contact number or address. If they don't respond, repeat your offer of wanting to resolve their issue. Be friendly, courteous and respectful in your response - do not get into the blame game in any public forum!
If the complaint is on a forum - respond on the forum and then also reprint the complaint and your responses back to your site and ask others views on how to fix the issue, or include your response to the concern. It is likely your raving fans will add in their positive comments and outweigh the negative ones. That way people see your official response and all the positives and this will lower the negative returns in Google search results.
3. Go hunting for feedback. Set some simple scans in place to find feedback on forums etc. Setting up a Google alert for your company name and your name is the start. Make sure to also set up alerts for inurl:forum "company name" and Powered by vBulletin + "company name" to track for comments in forums. Set up a Tweetdeck Twitter search for Twitter comments about your company name, your name or websites.
4. Respond quickly to comments. If you get negative publicity generally the worst thing to do is ignore it or wait for a few days. Respond within 24 hours (ideally within the hour) in a positive helpful way, in the same medium the complaint was made. For example the head of Domino's Pizza in the USA uploaded a film on You Tube to counter negative press about a few of his employees You Tube video clip. You may need help from a copywriter or other specialist to help you frame the best response.
5. But what if it goes viral? This is where you need to have the phone number of a good PR company that understands and handles Web 2.0 on speed dial. There are lots of PR firms out there - but not all "get" Web 2.0. Take the time now to track one down and form a relationship with them. Disaster recovery PR is a unique skill so you need to have someone on board just as you have disaster recovery plans in place for your computers and offices.
Customer complaints in a Web 2.0 world means you need to take greater responsibility and ownership of finding and responding to issues. Sure, bring your toolkit of complaints resolution skills and training with you - but in this era you need to include a few extra tools and a few extra specialists such as copywriters and PR agents into your mix.
About the Author Ingrid Cliff is a freelance writer and the Chief Word Wizard of Heart Harmony - a writing services studio that helps put your business into words. For a free copy of the "7 Secrets of Compelling Copy & Powerful Words" visit her website www.heartharmony.com.au .
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