How to “damage control” when the most unexpected happens in your social media platform?

Complaints, negative comments, angry customers is one of the the major concern of many marketers who are managing social media networks for the organization/brands/campaigns, because how well you manage these damages will either make or break the campaign.  Imagine someone who genuinely wants to voice out their concern, and their remark gets deleted.  Do you think he/she is going to keep quiet about it?  He is probably going to tell the whole world the incident and the word of mouth gets around fast & deep.

Three things you should never do when facing damaging remarks (part of damage control):
(1)Blatantly delete it
(2)Ignore it
(3)Challenge the person openly

Doing the above three things invokes anger, dissatisfaction and most importantly increases the urge to tell the whole world about the experience.  The person who manages the social media network must be tactful in managing all remarks-its better to spend some time to cross-reference or think it over before than just shot yourself in the foot.  Afterall, social media is all about engaging the customers and potential customers.  Taking the easy way out by deleting or ignoring isn’t going to help you campaign and can turn into a very bad PR.

So, what to do in event of a negative remark?  Here’s some tips on damage control based on my experience (might not be conclusive) :-

(1) Acknowledge the remark and take the discussion offline by asking for his contact number so that a representative can contact him to address his problem
(2) Get more information about the issue/problem and offer assistance.  You want to engage with the customer, so you have to listen.  Don’t blow your top.  They are afterall, always right.
(3) If the problem is widespread (a lot of people with the same complaint), offer a toll-free number that customers can instantly call.  Post the phone number clearly everywhere people can see it – so you have a direct line for people to voice their concern rather than post it openly for everyone to see.  Its ideal to be able to deal with issues directly, and any organization should appreciate that the concerns gets channeled directly to them and not to 3rd party ears.  Many times, competitiors pick up these complaints and use it to their advantage – so you definitely don’t want that to happen.
(4) Be as friendly as possible.  Try to help and engage.  Don’t jump into conclusions.  Understand the problem first.
(5) Be prepared with direct lines with expert customer service officers to handle complaints.  You don’t want to give out a direct line to a person whom are not able to handle these issues.  It can make matters worse.  Customers want a solution, not a punch bag.

An organization/brand/campaign on social media network can easily attract a lot of negative & damaging remarks.  As a marketer handling an organization’s social media network, its not just about posting messages to make it look ‘happening’.  It simply doesn’t work that way.  Even if you have thousands of fans going ga-ga about some events, one small mention about a pain that everyone is going through can spark a lot of fire.  And worse, if it turns into a widespread forest fire.  Thus, damage control planning for social media is the first thing to think about when implementing a social media plan.

Recently, I saw a comment on a service that I was using and I was so tempted to post a negative remark because of a long ‘pain’ I’ve been feeling.  After much contemplating, I decided to post the remark.  And guess what.  It was deleted, just like that, no mention no acknowledgement no direct message.  NOTHING.  I can’t mention names but I can tell you its a big brand with big budget.  Now I know, they are not listening… they just want to be listened to, and that’s what social media is not all about.

Just remember that, damage control is as important as your entire social media initiatives.

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