Best Practices: Dealing Effectively with Customer Feedback via Social Media

We recently chatted with Pete Blackshaw, vice president of Digital Strategic Services at Nielsen, and his colleague, Maya Swedowsky, about how customers use social media sites to praise and complain about retailers and best practices retailers use to respond. Here’s a clip from the full interview available on eMarketer Total Access:

eMarketer: What causes negative buzz to escalate into something big?

Mr. Blackshaw: It depends on what you might characterize as “plausible believability” or the extent to which others feel like they have direct or relevant experience, even something that approximates it. So a lot of what you see is, in fact, consumers seconding the emotion. They can relate to that issue. In some cases, it may move in a really irrational, sometimes unfair, direction. But quite often, especially in retail, there are quite a few consumers who truly have relevant experience. So if they feel like they can relate to the emotional pain, they’ll pile on. Now, if the criticism is unfair, it’s not uncommon for other consumers to call that out. There is a bit of a self-correcting mechanism when the issue goes too far.

When you do have a consensus of negatives, that’s a big watch-out. We typically will take that data and go back to the clients and often ask really hard questions about company operations, mismanaged expectations, depth of training of employees, because sometimes that can trigger a lot of the negatives. We do look at this with the assumption that there typically is an issue that needs to be resolved.

Ms. Swedowsky: There are some interesting variations between types of social media platforms. What I started noticing is that Facebook has emerged as a place where people vent their very tactical concerns. So if they’re already fans of a retailer, they’re more likely to come to the Facebook page to complain if the retailer, for example, stops offering services.

An example is Kohl’s at some point stopped offering free shipping to its most valued customers. Where we really saw that coming through was on the Facebook page, which made sense, because these were people who were loyal shoppers. Because they were loyal shoppers, they were fans or advocates for Kohl’s and therefore a fan on Facebook. So that was the first place they went to where they felt they could reach Kohl’s immediately and get their opinions heard. We do see people chiming in after that first person’s post, saying, “Yeah, what happened to that and why aren’t we getting that anymore? I may take my business elsewhere.” Whenever a company or a retailer switches their policies or takes something away, like layaway, for example, we see that consumers come online, especially on the Facebook fan pages, to address that.

eMarketer: Do consumers post negative comments online other than to get a direct response from a retailer?

Mr. Blackshaw: A lot of times they’re not looking for a response. Again, that’s what’s so important, even curious, about the social media space. We sometimes have this stereotype that consumers are just looking for coupons or free stuff or handholding by the company. There’s definitely a lot of truth to that. Today, consumers get a lot of validation and satisfaction and a sense of community with other consumers around a common experience. Marketers really need to understand that. It’s one big reason why the CRM space has pushed into this more informal zone of feedback where consumers aren’t necessarily providing direct feedback, but they’re talking around the company. It still merits interventions of sorts, but it’s a completely different dynamic. It’s really important to understand what is truly motivating that consumer.

eMarketer: What factors should retailers consider in deciding how to respond to a negative comment online?

Ms. Swedowsky: If that person has come to one of the company’s social media outposts, like Facebook or Twitter, to make that comment, that the retailer should respond to that and should try to respond to really most comments that are posted directly on the Facebook fan page or directed at their Twitter account, because it’s clear that that person is making their statement or their stance known and presumably wants a response. But there are conversations happening everywhere.

So companies like Best Buy are really at the forefront of proactively monitoring with their Twelpforce customer service program. They really are one of the first retailers to be so proactive. At the same time, even if they have 1,200 people, let’s say, doing that, they can’t necessarily answer everyone. So they need to prioritize. If it is someone who had a very specific negative experience at a store and they’re complaining about that, then that person might be more straightforward to address versus someone who’s just airing general negativity. At some point you need to prioritize simply because there is so much discussion happening.

Mr. Blackshaw: It’s all how you provide context, how you measure the influence. If it’s an issue where you historically have shown volatility, you may want to dial up. Sometimes there’s a real cost of not engaging and responding. Sometimes the response is just how you make sure that your Website has content that might thoughtfully deal with their issue.

eMarketer: How important is it for a retailer to have its loyal customers come to its defense when facing harsh criticism?

Mr. Blackshaw: That’s always the objective: to try to create the conditions under which you have what we call, or what many refer to, as “user contribution.” That’s the whole essence. The reason why social media is such a big idea is that it creates this opportunity to drive brand advocacy. We’re creating context for consumers to feel a deeper bond with the brand, to participate with the brand. When the brand gets in trouble, those consumers can often come to the rescue of the brand.

I recently listened to a case study by a friend of mine at Newell Rubbermaid, and they got themselves in some hot water on the baby stroller safety issues. They had really spent a lot of time nurturing brand advocacy. Although they took some pretty negative PR hits because of the safety issue, as you would expect, their recovery was much more dramatic because their advocates really went to work for them and posted defense statements on the message boards and tried to ease the concern. Rubbermaid was doing some of this themselves. What really put them in a better position was that their consumers were actually stepping up to the plate in trying to fix the issue.

That’s why the really big idea in social media is this notion of next-generation customer relationship management. How do we take our loyal consumers and turn them into something even more valuable?

eMarketer: Do most of the consumer comments on social media sites about retailers tend to be positive?

Mr. Blackshaw: When brands make it easy to provide feedback through ratings and reviews and other tools, the percentage of positive feedback goes up significantly. Historically, companies have made it really difficult for consumers to provide feedback; hence, the only thing that really pushes through is the negative. As the barriers to entry decrease, as expression devices proliferate, such as mobile phones that enable friction-free tweets, for example, our natural inclination to give someone a high-five or a compliment.

eMarketer: How are retailers using YouTube to respond to consumer complaints?

Mr. Blackshaw: Brands are leveraging every available communications outlet to clarify and correct issues, whether it’s an auto manufacturer seeking to deal with a recall or whether it’s a retailer dealing with all sorts of nasty-grams because they got things wrong on Black Friday. What’s powerful about rapid response tools like YouTube is they can often speak to emotion. You’re looking at the executive. They’re giving a very heartfelt apology or clarifying an issue. Facebook is a 24/7 platform. Twitter is always on. So they afford you these additional outlets to deal with the issue.

Keep in mind that most companies have call centers that are living in the Neanderthal age where they close at 5:00 p.m. They typically don’t operate in the off hours. That’s not good enough in a world where the consumer doesn’t care. They will throw the nasty-gram at any time of the day. So making sure that you hedge your bet and have these opportunities to engage and respond across all these different platforms 24/7 is a really good strategy.

eMarketer: Does negative buzz also provide a retailer with an opportunity to form a deeper connection with customers?

Mr. Blackshaw: The whole essence is to turn everything into a positive. On Twelpforce they know that the pain point is the opportunity to solve, delight and exceed expectations. If you carefully analyze their TV commercials, you’ll notice that the whole dramatic effect premise behind the copy starts with the pain point. So someone gets up there and says, “Gosh, I couldn’t find the product” or “I’m confused.” Then the Twelpforce answers the issue.

Again, there’s this whole notion that service is the new marketing solution. Sometimes things are so negative you can’t repair them. By and large, a lot of these issues are just begging for an easy response.

The full version of this interview is available here, to eMarketer Total Access clients only. Every day they have access to new interviews with digital marketing leaders and trendsetting entrepreneurs.

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