Social media provides the opportunity to spread bad news far further and faster.
This can be, for example:
- On their own Facebook wall for their friends to see
- By sending out tweets for their followers to see
- By putting a comment on a location-based service such as Foursquare, for anyone else visiting that establishment
- By putting a comment on your business’s Facebook wall (if you have one and you allow comments), for other customers to see
The first challenge is to identify when your business is being maligned. Comments on your own wall should be obvious, and there are various tools available to search the other social media tools.
If the complaint appears to be true, then you can respond to it in accordance with your usual customer service principles. Whether you then publicise your response, such as by a reply to the posting, is up to you. If the complaint is snowballing by involving other people, your response needs special care.
If the customer looks like they are trying it on, then your response would vary accordingly.
But what if the complaint appears to be untrue? Has it been posted by a competitor or a genuine customer?
What about the Law?
The laws of libel and slander apply equally to social media as to any other form of communication. Should you go to law?
That is a tricky question. They say “any publicity is good publicity”. Suing a competitor is likely to provide both you and them with publicity. But what if it is a customer?
The recent case of System Graph suing a customer for EUR200k in Greece highlights the dilemma. Apparently the customer had a legitimate complaint, and after the initial experience couldn’t trust System Graph to put it right, which they had offered to do. He made a posting on Twitter about the company, which the company considers defamatory.
The PR professionals appear to be in agreement that legal action is not advisable. Would you want your company’s reputation to be one of suing customers, whether the action proves successful or not?
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