WEEK3 Part 1: Difficulty Communicating with a Business

I've been fortunate to say I have had very few times of real difficulty communicating with a business. I give credit to that in part to the good or bad reviews I can research on social media before hand. So I choose more carefully who I deal with.  I purchased a Groupon for a service that upon redeeming was not returning my call and would only reply with text messages that they would get back to me.  In the end I got my money back from Groupon. I took screenshots of our conversation and ended up leaving a not so great Yelp review. Turns out others were experiencing the same problem.

Social media can be a great tool to get noticed when you have a problem. Provided the business your dealing with is active and uses it too.  You can reach out in an instant message, share a photo,  leave a review. A good business will quickly respond to you to resolve the issue as soon as possible. As I mentioned above, Yelp is a great first step before even dealing with a business, as is any other social media outlets they might have.  Do the research on a business via social media beforehand and save yourself the stress.

I haven't personally reached out with business' through social media, so I do not have a positive experience to share. I have however, seen this happen with others.  They comment about a negative experience they had and the business owner replies within the day with an agreeable resolution.

With my job at 101 Things To Do we share a daily coupon that our audience can save straight to their smartphones or print.  We had a guest comment on a post that she was unable to see anything and couldn't figure it out even though others had commented that they had no problem doing so.   I think the most appropriate way to respond to negative comments is to first acknowledge if it was our mistake, or at least acknowledge that we're sorry for the inconvenience and desire to correct the issue. But in this case it was a user error.  We simply apologized and offered a step by step instruction on how to save the digital coupon to their apple wallet. Turns out they hadn't hit the "add" button on their smartphone. I think the worst thing we can do is react quickly with rude comments back or ignoring it altogether.

Thankfully at my job we get a lot of positive feedback.  Those are the easiest and most fun ones to respond to. There are many options on Facebook such as emoji's, the new Facebook comment animations are fun (type congrats in your next post or in a reply and click on it after for a balloon screen surprise!).  You can share a short video response, or even an appropriate animated GIF.  On a more professional basis you can simply tag and share posts to give the business a public thank you AND extra exposure since now all of your friends will see who you're sharing about. Don't forget the very simple "Like" to a comment at the very least.

Overall I've had a good experience with business on social media, both personally and professionally. I think it just requires a long fuse, and good manners.