Social Media - Customer Generated Comments - Blessing or Curse?

We discussed a business using location services such as FourSquare a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that they are great when people comment positively about you to spread a good word.

But whether you are a venue or another type of business, what if there are any negative comments?

Negative comments can be genuine, but they can also be spurious and indeed defamatory – perhaps from competitors or disgruntled employees.

How you deal with these is crucial. In my experience a genuine complaint that is well handled produces customer loyalty that you just don’t get by always getting it right!

Conversely dealing well with comments which are clearly wrong or exaggerated is equally important. Anything you put on a website will speak volumes for you as a venue.

So news arrives from the US that some 300 venues or more are clubbing together for a possible “class action” against TripAdvisor. This is one of the more established and respected customer feedback sites.

So how should you react to negatives?

Firstly it’s obviously worth monitoring what’s being said on feedback sites like FourSquare and TripAdvisor, and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. If you spot something critical that looks genuine, how are you going to respond? Privately? In public on the site? Both?

But if there’s something clearly ridiculous, what’s the plan? Should you ignore it, flame it, address it coolly, or go legal? Does the website provide venues with a mechanism to tackle such comments? It all depends.

But if nothing else, remember that anything you say online will stay online. With Google caches and the like, any comment will stay somewhere online no matter what you try to do to remove it!

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