Five ways to channel customer frustration into adoration using social media

By Lauren McCabe

Originally published on peteramayer.com

First understand this: customers complain about your brand because they want to love it.

They wish your products pleased them, your service satisfied them, your offerings fulfilled their every desire. They act annoyed, angry, and irritated, but underneath that is a secret desire for you to succeed. To be amazing. To be the best brand that you can be.

In any customer service interaction, your job is to channel frustration into adoration.

The line between hate and love is so fine with a dissatisfied customer that a timely and effective response can often entirely shift sentiment. Social media gives you an opportunity to do this publicly, where everyone can see that your brand cares.

This is a fact: 33% of consumers who are contacted about an online complaint publish a positive review.

This is another fact: An additional 34% delete their original negative review.

And this is my favorite fact: 18% turn into loyal customers and buy more.

In an age where your brand will be talked about online whether you like it or not, social media gives you a place to control the conversation and transform negative sentiment into positive action.

Here are four ways to achieve adoration:

1. Be Timely. When a customer is disappointed he or she wants resolution fast. Create a process that allows you to address complaints on Facebook and Twitter the moment they arise. This is especially important for crisis management, but you should also brainstorm ways to funnel complaints on social media to customer service. Don’t avoid a late breaking crisis. Be quick and timely. The longer you take to address a complaint, the longer you leave it open to additional complaints.

2. Be Empathetic. We’re human. We love, hate, vent, and laugh. When your product disappoints, it strikes a chord in us. Acknowledge that emotion. Don’t say, “I’m sorry that you feel that way.” Say, “I’m sorry – that must be so frustrating.” Do you see the difference? The first is blaming the customer, the second is sympathizing with the customer. Show your customers that their disappointment is your disappointment, because it is. You want your brand to please them.

3. Be Apologetic. Don’t beat around the bush, say “I’m sorry.” Show your customer that your brand takes responsibility for dissatisfying him/her.

4. Be Human. It’s easy for a customer to rail against a giant, faceless brand, but it’s hard to yell at an actual person. When crafting responses to negative feedback online, sign your name. Just your first name. Don’t go crazy with last names. But this single act of humanizing your brand will ease the customer’s angst and potentially minimize their venting.

5. Be Actionable. Whenever a customer has a complaint, you need to do something. Tell your customer about this. A customer may, for example, need to email your support team to actually get a resolution. That’s fine, but make sure that you tell him/her the steps that you took to make the situation better. Say, “I’ve contacted our support team – they should be expecting your email.” However small the action is, take it and tell the customer that you’re working for him/her.

Three new ways to think about online influencers

By Lauren McCabe

Originally published on peteramayer.com

Prior to the advent of the Internet, the only way to access consumers was to fill their physical world.

Billboards. Print ads. One-way points of contact that created the feeling that a brand was omnipresent, hovering over your shoulder – there but untouchable. The speaker in front of a stadium of 10,000. 

Things have changed.

Now, on social media, the consumer owns a brand’s message just as much as the brand does. In fact, people are the conduits of that message – an army of influencers whose comments, likes and shares can quickly spread in the online space.

Finding the right way to influence and engage your consumers online is important and sometimes not as intuitive as you would think.

Here are three new ways to approach influence online.

1. Follower Count Means Little.

This is what we first saw – brands sought to engage users with the largest networks. Surely, if someone had thousands of followers on Twitter, they had a sizable footprint that a brand could access if only they could wiggle their way into the conversation.

Here’s the thing – large batches of Twitter followers can be bought quite easily and cheaply, and while they’ll follow anyone for a small fee, they won’t talk to you or engage with you. So the influence? Practically nil.

In fact, I worked on a project where we aggressively engaged people with very few followers. Our goal was to reach the right people that we could shepherd through a carefully curated customer journey, transforming them into first adopters, avid consumers, case studies and finally, influencers.

We actually found that people with fewer followers were much more likely to listen to us, since we weren’t competing with the voices of thousands of other people, brands and bloggers. And these small-scale “influencers” had significant sway in their networks of close friends.

2. Online influencers are offline influencers.

Your most fervent advocates online behave the same way offline, talking about your product and telling your story to their friends. An influencer isn’t only a person, but also a personality type, and your online influencers can easily be called to action to exert influence on your offline customers.

This is something that brands don’t realize because it can be hard to measure. Where and how do you measure offline word of mouth?  But creating incentives, rewards and relationships fuels the story that they tell their family at dinner, friends over drinks, their aunts on the phone, and that random guy on the airplane.

3.  Be influenced.

Your customers’ hopes, dreams and aspirations for their world should color your content on social media. We’re seeing that influence is becoming a two way street – that in order for people to advocate for a brand, the brand must advocate for its customers first.

Start small. Work on a micro level. Post one piece of content online and then see how your community responds. Use their response content to create your next piece of content, and once you have figured out the pulse and rhythm of your community, support your messaging with paid media to help the content reach more people.

So my biggest advice to brands? Be influenced. Be wooed by your customers.