How to Turn Social Media Critics to Converts

A 3-step guide to improving social media ROI

If you haven’t seen the video, ‘United breaks guitars,’ uploaded to YouTube by Canadian musician Dave Carroll after a particularly negative experience with United Airlines, then watch it now. The ‘United breaks guitars’ case study is one of the best examples of how negativity on social media can trigger a huge amount of turbulence for your brand and ultimately cause your online reputation to nose dive. In 2009, United’s baggage handlers broke Carroll’s guitar. After confronting a mountain of bureaucracy and ultimately having his reimbursement claim rejected, he took matters into his own hands by writing, performing and uploading a very catchy and damning song which garnered over 13.5 million views. Two years later, United was given the dubious honour of being the world’s most hated airline on social media; quite a feat when recalling that Delta hit the news that year for forcing returning US servicemen to pay for excess baggage.

Since then, United has stepped up its social media and customer service efforts, although they are still lagging behind their rivals. So, how could United improve? Here, Digimind brings you a three-step guide to capitalizing on social media negativity to benefit your customer service and overall brand perception.

Step 1: Monitor Social Media to Pinpoint Negativity

The key to good customer service is implementing an effective social listening technique using a social media monitoring tool. The best tools are able to classify online information by keyword, media type, country, sentiment and influence as soon as it appears online, and display individual mentions or overall quantities and percentages depending on what you are looking for. This will allow you to locate all of the negative comments, identify which ones are actionable and respond or engage directly in real time. It is important to remember that almost all comments will be actionable; even complaints without an obvious solution should be treated with respect and concern. After all, haters and critics who take to social media are simply looking to be heard and seeking a better customer experience.

Step 2: Engage with Critics and Haters

Corporations obsessing over fans, influencers and brand ambassadors on social media are likely improving their marketing content and branding, but not their customer service. While influencers and ambassadors can serve as gateways to communities who will trust and listen to your brand content, haters and critics are the strongest influencers by volume and the sheer emotional force of their messages which others can easily relate to. Thus, the way corporations respond to criticism can affect perception much more than a positive promoted message because when a customer is converted from disappointment to satisfaction, the audience watching is converted too. Seeking out your strongest critics will reveal shortcomings and areas for improvement for your brand, and engaging with them in the right way (i.e., by offering an apology and a solution as quickly as possible) will show the more human, compassionate side of large corporations and make people feel closer to the brand.

Step 3:  Incorporate Negativity Management into your Social Media Strategy

Confronting negative comments on social media is still very much out of corporations’ comfort zones, but unfortunately for them, ignorance is not bliss. Ignoring your social media critics is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine; you may feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t be long before you start to feel the impact. Your reputation will start to plummet and you could be left completely grounded if something goes wrong, which is why analysing social media sentiment is imperative. With a good social media monitoring tool, you can set alerts for a particular volume of negativity or certain keywords, so that when a crisis presents itself you will be immediately informed. However, dealing with angered consumers takes skill, diplomacy, compassion and, when situations deteriorate, solid protocol. By giving community managers sensitivity training for social media and ensuring they are prepared should disaster strike, you can implement a stronger social media strategy and set targets for customer service improvement.

To conclude, the way in which a brand responds to negativity on social media can tip the scales between social media success and failure. With social media monitoring you can seek out your haters and use their criticism constructively to build a sturdier customer service, instead of waiting for a public relations embarrassment like United Airlines. Fortunately, they appear to be learning from their mistake; after the Carroll incident they changed their customer service policy and now use the ‘United breaks guitars’ video internally for customer service training. Mark Krolick, United’s MD of marketing and product development recently observed:

‘Over the past year, we have realized a lot of the value in social media comes from being able to better service your customers and having a two-way dialogue versus us only putting marketing material out into the social media channels.’

Well put; it looks like United is finally moving towards a first class customer service. Are you going to upgrade?

Brought to you by www.digimind.com