Complaining on social media?

[owas]

As most companies have a twitter or Facebook page, they seem to a magnet for complaints. I found myself today, having more of a conversation/complaint with a mobile company on Facebook, than I have during any of our phone conversations. Do you think receiving negative feedback on Facebook can harm a company, or is it a good chance for the company to show how they resolves the issues, satisfy the cusotmer, and show they do listen and take in complaints?

 

[Henry Osadzinski]

It all depends on how the company / person in charge of the account handles it really. I've encountered some of the best and worst customer service via social media channels. A great experience that comes to mind was when I was having issues with my phone and 3, who make a habit of introducing the person in charge of their Twitter account every morning and signing off every evening, were friendly, professional and amazingly helpful considering they only had 140 characters at a time with which to communicate.

On the other side, however, I complained about a poorly worded, offensive tweet from Wired magazine's contributor and received an angry message and public call for other users to join in with the abuse. They lost at least one reader right there.

It's something we encounter here on UKBF as well. Often, if someone has a negative experience with a company or product, they want to share their story both to alert others to the issue and reach out to the people responsible. The best resolutions I've seen on the site have been when a representative came on and publicly addressed the problems and sought to resolve it as best they could. It doesn't always end on a 100% positive note but to be visibly accepting criticism and doing something to address it always works in their favour.

I can understand that this can be scary though and no-one wants negative content to sit there, affecting search results etc. Still, there have been so many examples of the Streisand Effect on Facebook, where offending wall-posts are removed but not before someone grabbed a screenshot, that you'd think social media marketers would have learned that it does more harm than good.

 

[7dans]

Earlier today I saw a post complaining about how staff had treated a girl with downs syndrome, the post had over 40,000 likes and had been shared numerous times. The Facebook page was also full of people complaining about that incident and voicing their concerns, also saying they would never go there again. Therefor I feel it's incredibly important to deal with any complaints received on Facebook, even if you reply saying you will look into the matter, etc, it's so easy for people to share a post or story, which could result in a minor issue becoming a brand threatening disaster!

Just my thoughts...

 

[presterjohn]

I basically called a woman posting on a mobile phone web site stupid for expecting a Facebook site to solve her problems. I had to eat my words though as the next post was from them offering to sort her problem out. Since then I have always kept that in mind and now occasionally done the same. Some times it works some times it doesn't.

 

[Mason1985]

Complained via twitter about O2 on two seperate occasions, received an inbox message asking me to email their social media team with my problem, had £125.02 worth of credit in two months.

 

[davek17]

I think social media is incredibly relevant today. In the old days it was good not to fail. Now as you will know as well as me, we all fail all the time so we all spent loads of time being seen not to fail!

In the social or digitally connected era we're in now, we need to focus on making our products great and we want people to talk to other people on our behalf. We make them happy and they tell others.

However Social media is like putting fuel on a bonfire in this sense.

So if you're trying toi hide things you'll get caught out, but you will fail at some stage too. So embrace social media and use it to your advantage. What I mean by this is that people are far more savvy today. They know we all fail form time to time, its not the failures that are important though it how we behave and what we do to put them right that matters. So in a sense if you complain via Twitter about your O2 service then your shouting to 1000's of people all in one go. O2 need to publicly deal with it and show all these people they're not only human (if only barely) but they are willing to put things right in the best way.

So the answer is you should be using as a consumer, if companies fail to respond then its going to cost them dearly. As a business you should also embrace social media and use it to show how transparent and human you are and to also show just how good you are.

Social media will whittle out the poor businesses who no longer have anywhere to hide! It'll just take large ones like O2 a bit longer to fail, but they will!

 

[owas]

I have set up, Facebook page with the company name sucks, took about 20 screen shots of No network coverage and post it on their FB page, complained in store, on-line, on the phone, and of course via facebook, still not got the issued resolved. Started talking a bit to them today but same old story

 

[ownage]

As most companies have a twitter or Facebook page, they seem to a magnet for complaints. I found myself today, having more of a conversation/complaint with a mobile company on Facebook, than I have during any of our phone conversations. Do you think receiving negative feedback on Facebook can harm a company, or is it a good chance for the company to show how they resolves the issues, satisfy the cusotmer, and show they do listen and take in complaints?

I don't know about the harm - because they can control the content on their page can't they?

But it's an easier way for them to communicate. Phone costs too much, emails has a lot of spam. Social is cost effective and and not spammy..so that's good for them over all. When you factor in the fact that it's out there, it's just a better incentive for them to take care of it.

For the customer social is also good, because you don't need to wait for 30 mins on the phone and leave messages no one gets back to.