![\"7](\"http:\/\/planfoundations.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Woman-Trying-to-Explain-Problem-via-Phone.jpg\")
<\/a>You work hard serving and acquiring customers. Then one day, someone posts a negative comment about your business at Amazon, Yelp, or Consumer Reports. How will you respond? The growth of online communication challenges how we deal with customer complaints. Ten years ago, it could be fun to deal with customer complaints. The customer would call you on the telephone or demand to see you in person to complain. I enjoyed turning an angry stranger into a loyal customer, or even a friend, by giving him or her solutions. Back then, every customer had an identity. Today, the complaining customer is more anonymous\u2014and often more hostile. The complainer might even prefer to vent anonymously\u2014and anonymity can enable someone to be more comfortable when posting negative comments. Your initial response might be to call the online complainer a coward or troll. You might think, \u201cThis review is totally unfair!\u201d If you remain angry, then the best response might be no response at all\u2014at least until your anger subsides. Either way, we should deal with an online complaint quickly. Let\u2019s explore seven ways to respond: 1.) \u201cFirst, take a step back<\/strong>,\u201d suggests Hannah Tighe of Chatterbox Social Media. The point is for you to remove negative emotions from your response. 2.) Be polite and apologize<\/strong>. \u201cIf the complaint is legitimate, then they need a sincere apology and politeness even if they are not being polite in the moment,\u201d says Tighe. 3.) Give them an opportunity to contact you offline to resolve their complaint<\/strong>. The complainer might not cooperate, but offline communication is more powerful than online communication. With quicker resolution time, opportunities for productive dialogue increase. 4.) \u201cCall them or email them directly<\/strong>,\u201d suggests publicist Jennifer Sherlock of Jenna Communications. \u201cShow them that you care!\u201d 5.) \u201cLet others online see how you are resolving the complaint<\/strong>,\u201d continues Sherlock. \u201cWe craft messages for clients and use the negative situation as a real-life marketing opportunity to let others know how good our clients are at what they do, even if the complainer continues to complain.\u201d 6.) Offer the customer their money back, <\/strong>a discount on a future purchase, or a replacement to enable them to feel better about your business. 7.) Set up an online alert system<\/strong> such as Google Alerts to stay on top of online complaints and manage your brand. It\u2019s OK for a business to make mistakes and be vulnerable. Businesses are made up of people, after all, and people aren\u2019t perfect. Moreover, do you really trust all the five-star reviews and glowing testimonials when you consider making a purchase? We\u2019ve become a bit jaded when reading testimonials, and we instinctively distrust the overly favorable ones. Observing how a business deals with a problem customer after a purchase is almost as important to me as the purchasing decision. At least I can feel more confident that if a problem surfaces after the sale, the business will take care of problem customers responsibly. ——————————————————————————————————————— Thank you to Jennifer Sherlock http:\/\/jennacommunications.com\/<\/a> and Hannah Tighe http:\/\/chatterboxsocialmedia.com\/<\/a> for your suggestions to help us better respond to negative online comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"7 Ways to Respond to a Negative Online Comment You work hard serving and acquiring customers. Then one day, someone posts a negative comment about your business at Amazon, Yelp, or Consumer Reports. How will you respond? The growth of online communication challenges how we deal with customer complaints. Ten years ago, it could be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6310,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30,53,32,14],"tags":[67,68,15,69,12],"class_list":["post-4717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manage-control-delegate-job-description-resource-allocation","category-managing_customers","category-operations-efficiency-managing-organize","category-john-j-mcadam-blog","tag-customer-complaint","tag-customer-service","tag-marketing","tag-negative-customer","tag-online"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4717"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6308,"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4717\/revisions\/6308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}