Should you delete negative customer comments on Social Media?

We often find that business owners are apprehensive towards Social Media and when they are looking to explore this type of communication, they ask us "what if we get bad reviews?".

Being the lovers of Social Media that we are, we often defend the social marketing platforms and inform businesses that Social Media is the here and now and can only benefit them by representing a genuine company. Until...GEM MEDIA received our first negative comment on Instagram last week!

Experiencing this level of customer dissatisfaction online made us feel vulnerable and open to additional comments, however we wanted to share our experience to help you when dealing with online complaints.

So, how did we deal with this?

- Firstly, we analysed the nature of the comment and had a look at the profile to ensure it wasn't a troll.

- We acted fast and publicly responded to the comment.

- We sent a private message to the profile to remain the personal brand that we are.

After our experience, we wanted to highlight that businesses should NOT delete negative customer comments on Social Media and instead welcome them.

Here are 5 reasons why:

1. Any feedback is good feedback. The negative comment that we received helped us to change the convo and angle of the post that we shared.

2. Having a negative comment shows that you're a true, honest brand.

3. You have good customer service. Did you know that 42% of customers will expect 60 mins response time? (Convince and convert)

4. Your commenter could become more frustrated and escalate the negativity across other social media channels.

5. You are able to turn a negative into a positive.

If this happens to your brand, ask yourself how quickly did you respond, what was your reaction, how was your customers reaction and how did it end.

If you do not react your followers will think you do not care about your customers or PR. After all, if a customer was to complain in front of you, you wouldn't ignore it, so don't treat Social Media any different.

For crisis PR Management or Social Media advice, please email hi@gemmediamk.com