When a customer complains about your retail business on social media

It is easier for customers (or anyone) to complain in a way that hurts your business (and you) than ever before thanks to the megaphone of easily accessible social media.

Through local community groups on Facebook, category based groups and more it is easy for a negative story about your business to gain traction and spin out of control before you know about it.

It is a bit of a sport today to pile on. I have seen it happen plenty of times.

Often, people pile on without knowing the facts, because the original post does not accurately represent the facts and because they enjoy the sport of piling on without regard to the facts.

On social media today people often complain about situations that are not real. They often spin a story to suit their outrage. Simply challenging this is not enough. Indeed, it can make it worse.

Here is my advice of how to handle criticism of your business on social media:

1. Take a screen cap of any negative post, to capture evidence while it is still accessible.
2. If the post is inaccurate, challenge the inaccuracies with facts. But do this in a calm and respectful way. Leave no room for twisting you response against you.
3. Make yourself accessible. In any comment or response, include your phone number and email address. This makes you real. It shows you are not hiding.
4. If the post does have some accuracy. Apologise and explain what you are doing about it.
5. Depending on the circumstances, you may wish to call out the post on your business social media pages – to be transparent and responsive.
6. In any post you respond with, anywhere, be respectful and truthful. Do not get drawn into being personal or petty.
7. If appropriate, explain in detail why something is done as it is. Provide enough information for people to understand your decisions and, hopefully, agree with you.
8. If the post is by a competitor and contains false and misleading information about your business, consider asking them to take it down as the post. Consider including this: You action in publishing what you have published about my business puts your company at peril of action under the Australian Consumer Law Act. The information is false and misleading. I think you have published with the intent of commercially harming my business. I request that you remove it immediately and refrain from publishing any such information, anywhere, in the future.

Don’t rely only on this advice. Do more research to be prepared. Any business active on social media will experience the kind sof attack I describe here. Be prepared.

Do not ignore any negative post or comment about your business. Fight for your business and those who rely on it for income. But do so with care, respect and professionalism.