Suppose, your airline informs you at midnight that your flight to Bangalore has been cancelled, and making it even worse, they ask you to re-book the two tickets you booked on two separate flights!!!
To vent out your annoyance, you search the web to find out the airline’s Facebook/Twitter handle to report the issue. You have reported but there is no response; Next morning you receive a canned reply as if some robot is sitting on the other side, annoying you to the core.
Brands have adopted social media, but still many of them don’t have any social customer care standards in place. Whenever a negative response comes, brands usually deal with them in a very callous manner, ending up in losing the customer forever.
So, what should not community managers do when talking to annoyed customers online – Following 6 points reflect on all the unacceptable practices brands indulge in;
Canned Responses
Responses should be as personal and spontaneous as possible. Putting up a pre-cooked response for a particular complaint will further hurt the customer’s sentiments. Always remember that you are talking on a social platform, so be social.
Not Answering Promptly
If the customer care team takes a long while to figure out an appropriate response, in the meanwhile customer would have vented out on another five platforms, fanning the negative sentiment,
Remember – As a negative response comes, promptly apologize for the issue and through the message convey a sense of urgency, that you’re serious about the complaint, this way you can buy some time to close the issue.
Not educating the customer
If customer asks for details of the issue or status of the complaint, then the team should make sure that s/he has the required information,
Asking the customer to be patient and requesting for some more time is not acceptable here, as it would be seen as a way to divert the conversation.
Deleting negative responses
This is a big “NO”, when brands receive negative responses they often delete it from the platform and think that they have stopped the fire from spreading;
What would happen if the customer took a snapshot of the complaint thread, and now he has put it up on a blog, saying that the brand deleted the complaint – The reputation of the brand will go for a toss.
Not ‘listening’ to customers
If you are using social media just to broadcast your products and services, then you are committing the biggest marketing mistake of your life.
A brand can never afford not listening to its customers – The community manager must know what they want, what they think and their feedback must be taken from every customer touch point,
So, start taking care of your customers or someone else will!!!
Image Credit – Randy Glasbergen (glasbergen.com)