There’s no denying it, it’s difficult dealing with angry social media customers. It can be stressful and time-consuming for both you and the customer. But remember, most angry social media customers just want some help for a wrong, or perceived wrong, by your business, so it’s best to deal with these uncomfortable situations when they arise.
Here are 7 truths about angry social media customers and how to face them
- Plan for the worst
- Be kind
- Talk to them
- Listen & communicate
- Help them
- Draw the line
- Take no crap
1. Plan for the worst
Expect to have angry customers. Even if you have an impeccable product or service and pride yourself on superior customer experience, people are emotional beings and inevitably, you’re going to have to deal with an angry customer. A plan reduces the stress of managing complaints when they occur for both the customer AND you! A plan means you don’t have to manage the situation 100% in the heat of the moment, you already know what to do and how to do it. This helps to take some of the emotion out of it. You can base your plan on the points in this article.
Some things to think about documenting include: common complaints, some draft responses, if you’ll offer extra value or a refund, where the line is on where you’ll stop engaging if the issue isn’t resolvable. Try not to copy and paste draft responses, especially on public comments, but use them as a guide. If you’re getting a lot of angry customers, take their feedback seriously and do what you can to change products, services or business processes to turn this around.
2. Be kind
Take this tip from Brené Brown: assume others are doing their best and make the most generous assumption about them. Your customer won’t be in this frame of mind, so it’s important that you be prepared to assume they’ve been wronged and that they can be helped. Remember, we’re all human, we’ve all been upset or angry when things didn’t go our way. People behave more angrily online because it’s more depersonalised than in real life. They can’t see or hear a real person in front of them so they don’t go to as much effort to manage their emotions. In most cases, their anger isn’t directed at you, it’s directed at your business.
Remember, most angry customers just want to be helped. There are many brands that don’t provide good customer service on social media so often angry customers think they’re going to be ignored. Once you start engaging with them they can turn around quite quickly. I honestly can’t count the number of angry social media customers who’ve become so much more polite after the first response. I’ve also seen many angry customers turn into very happy customers and some even turn into advocates once you’ve helped to resolve their issues.
3. Talk to them
Sounds simple, right? But many people are inclined to avoid angry customers and address easier customer service queries or the more fun side of community engagement. Prioritise your angry customers and their complaints above other customer service and community management. If you don’t, an easily resolved issue can quickly get out of hand and take even more time to manage or do more damage to your business.
Respond to angry customers as soon as you’re able to, even if you don’t have the answers they need. That doesn’t mean you need to be responding 24/7, it just means at the next available opportunity during business hours or the set times you check your social media channels.
4. Listen & communicate
Angry customers can be difficult to deal with, but try not to match their anger. Remember point two! Listen to them, their words may be muddled and not make sense to you. Don’t try to read between the lines, ask clarifying questions and find out the exact nature of their issue.
Let them know when you’ll be able to come back with more information and honour that commitment. Communicate as often as you can with updates, don’t go more than 24 hours without updating them, even if it’s just to let them know you’re working on it but don’t have more information for them yet.
5. Help them
Do your best to resolve their issue. Most customer complaints can be resolved. You can provide a refund, a voucher for future purchases, an explanation of what happened, information on the process they went through, recognition that something went wrong or an apology.
Make the wrong a right for them.
6. Draw the line
If the customer continues to be irate, or is swearing at you and not giving you the information you need, you can tell them you need to end the conversation because you can’t help them while they’re behaving this way. Make it clear to them that you’d like to help, but you don’t deserve to be treated this way because you’re a human not a faceless brand online.
I DO NOT recommend you tell them to calm down, this often only angers people more as they feel their anger is justified.
7. Take no crap
All of the previous points apply to people who are your customers, potential customers or community members and who are expressing genuine dismay.
You DON’T have to deal the same way with trolls and online abusers. Delete & block immediately. Ain’t nobody got time for that!
