I know what you’re thinking … “John has certainly lost his mind” – not really! In social media negative is positive!
Allow me to explain – A lot of companies fear Social Media because they have no control over all the elements involved in the process. “How can we stop customers from saying negative things about us?“- I hear this from a lot of companies when I try to encourage them to use social media in their marketing plans.
True – in social media you’re standing naked in front of the masses – but when you have nothing to hide, why should you be fearless. A company should invite negative feedback to better itself. When I ask a market research agency to conduct a brand awareness survey or a brand positioning survey – I’m always interested in the negative comments! It’s good practice to take the negative feedback and turn it into a positive opportunity.
The other day, I received a complaint from a customer about a bad experience he had in one of the SUBWAY stores in the UAE. This customer was furious – his email was very offensive – but let’s not forget he is king. As the Head of Marketing for SUBWAY in the Middle East & Africa region, I could have done three things – 1) ignore the complaint – after all he’s just one customer, 2) defer the complaint to a customer service rep – since it’s not my job to deal with customer complaints, or 3) pick up the phone and call the customer. I chose option number 3 – why? because I saw it as an opportunity to make the business better – and that’s exactly what I did – I changed an angry yet loyal customer to a content customer and potential vendor (it turns out he works for a big Ad Agency and wanted to pitch for the SUBWAY regional account).
Lesson Learned: Negative feedback is more valuable than positive feedback – after all, you know what you’re doing right and you should be interested in finding out what you’re doing wrong and improve on it.
Social Media presents you with that opportunity on a daily bases and it’s up to you how you’d want to deal with it. Think About it!
Absolutely agree. In fact, when we want feedbacks from customers, negative ones are the BEST! Why? because, too much positive feedbacks would lead to laziness, contentment…people always satisfy with nice words and think: It’s enough! But in this competitive market, we can’t stop learning, stop improving, always offer more that customers ask for and expect….therefore, negative feedbacks not only tell what to improve directly, but also continuously remind us that: there’s still not enough and never satisfy with the present.
Negative is definitely positive
In my opinion, receiving feedbacks, regardless positive or negative, is already a success by using SMM. NO feedback is the dead end
AGREED! I told @fyeguy about my very negative experience at FYE and he sent me a $20 giftcard via mail! It was awesome!
Some companies really “get” SM and try their best to answer all the complaints and positive feedback. It’s important to address the negative feedback and keep that customer loyalty and build the brand up.
LOVE this post!
Thanks for the comment Lauren. Quite the initiative from FYE – i’m sure this has built more loyalty from your end (than ever before). If companies could only understand that it’s not always about ROI – as Gary Vaynerchuk said in one of his vlogs, what is the dollar value on a thank you, or a smile … ? Speaking of that – I honestly can’t wait to read his new THANK YOU ECONOMY book.