Managing Complaints in Cyberspace
When a customer complains to a big company with a big brand, there is typically a team of people responsible for resolving the client’s complaint. When the same customer posts a negative comment about a brand somewhere on the Internet, visible to you and every potential customer on the planet, most companies do nothing.
Why?
Companies invest in customer service departments for two reasons:
Defending their market share - they don’t want to lose business because of a bad client experience
Defending their brand image - they want to diffuse a bad situation before the customer goes out and tells 10 friends who tell 10 more, and so on
This reactive "complaint department" model is no longer effective in defending your brand image, as so much of the conversation between customers is now online.
This reveals an interesting paradox about the way companies allocate resources. Call them with a complaint and they’ll have a team of people working to help you (well, the good brands will.) But post something online for everyone to see for all eternity, and most companies won’t do a thing about it.
Why not? Those negative comments are popping up in Google searches every time someone looks for the brand online – isn’t that far worse than someone who tells ten friends who tell ten more?
Personally, I use Google to check for “dirt” on a company that I am planning to deal with for the first time especially if I haven’t heard of them before. I’ll use searches like “Name of Company Scam” or “Name of Company complaints” to dig up negative information on the brand, just to see if there might be a reason not to deal with them.
As Andy Sernovitz asks over at the "Damn I wish I'd Thought of That" blog, why don’t companies invest in hiring what I could call a “clean up crew”? Get a group of students together to scout the Internet for negative mentions of your brand, then see what you can do about managing those potentially damaging comments.
And for those who would say there’s nothing you can do, I disagree:
If you’ve been bashed on a message board over a bad customer experience, post something yourself that apologizes for the bad experience and give the client a way to contact you. Don’t go overboard here because you’ve only heard one side of the story so far, but the fact that you care enough about your image to post a reply will help to mitigate the negative post. When potential clients stumble across the client’s rant through a Google search, they’ll also see your reply, helping to balance the story.
If you’ve been wrongly accused of something, share information that helps to balance the negative point of view, or outright prove it wrong, but don’t be confrontational about it.
Compile some stats on why you’re getting bashed – if a common theme emerges, post some robust information about the issue on your website and link to it in response to negative mentions of your brand online.
Complaints have moved online - isn't it time companies started putting some resources behind proactive image management instead of reactive complaint management?
