It happens to the best of us. Sometimes we fail a customer. We hate it but no company is perfect. And with all of the social media platforms available, the customer can get so angry they blog about it, they Tweet it and put it up on Facebook for the world to see. And not only their followers can see it, but if anyone is following your company name and someone negatively (and positively) Tweets about you, anyone can see it.

So how do you turn the negative into a positive?

How to Handle Social Media

First of all, follow your own company name, then if someone posts something to Twitter or Facebook negative about their experience with your company, ask them to call you, or ask them to email you so you can discuss the issue. If the issue has been fixed, go ahead and apologize, then reply to them (or direct message) that you’ve heard their concerns and fixed the issue. Any way you can, start a dialog with them.

How to Handle the Nasty Email

Many of us have been there. You’ve got a customer who sends the email of all emails wrought with anger about their experience. Much of it is them getting their emotions out into another medium. But what happens on the other end of that sent email is that some poor person whose job it is to deal with customers gets the email and most of the time, they had nothing to do with the issue. It’s time to take a deep breath, not take offense, and focus on the issue. Picking up the phone can go a long way in building your customer relations because most of the time your customer isn’t even expecting an email back let alone a call.

The message is, going above and beyond to get to the heart of these issues will go far in turning a negative experience for your customers into a positive one. Chances are if ONE of your customers is experiencing this issue, others are too, they’re just not communicating with you.

The best thing you can do is to make sure whenever you upgrade something or fix an issue customers are having, tell ALL of your customers even if you think it illustrates a weakness you have. You’ll make more customers happy which is what you want in the long run.

Do you have any experience turning a negative into a positive? Love to hear it!

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