Twitter can be a great way to connect with customers and build customer relationships, but it can also be a place where customer complaints are aired.

If you’re not prepared to handle customer complaints on Twitter, you could end up making a bad situation worse. In this article, you will find some key tips for handling complaints on Twitter.

1. Respond Quickly

Twitter is a fast-paced platform, and customers expect a quick response to their complaints. If you don’t respond quickly, they may take their complaint to another social media platform or even to your competitors.

Fortunately, Twitter provides an easy way for businesses to respond to customer complaints quickly and easily. Make sure you have someone assigned to monitor your Twitter account so that customer complaints can be addressed quickly.

By monitoring Twitter for mentions of your company, you can ensure that any negative feedback is dealt with swiftly. In addition, setting up automated alerts can help you to respond even more quickly. By taking advantage of these tools, you can turn customer complaints into an opportunity to build customer loyalty.

2. Acknowledge the Complaint

Customers that take the time to reach out and lodge a complaint are giving you an opportunity to improve your product or service. It’s important to not only acknowledge the customer’s complaint but also to show them that you’re taking their feedback seriously.

Before responding to a customer complaint, do your research and make sure you have all the facts. If you don’t know the answer to a question, let the customer know that you’re looking into it and will get back to them as soon as possible.

3. Take Ownership of the Issue

When a customer complains, it’s important to take ownership of the issue. This means acknowledging that the problem was caused by your company and not by the customer. It also means putting the customer’s needs first and doing everything you can to resolve the issue. It’s your job to take that blame and make things right. This may require making some tough decisions, but it’s important to do what’s best for the customer.

4. Be Polite and Professional

Customer complaints are a fact of life for any business but responding to them doesn’t have to be a nightmare. When it comes to Twitter, the key is to be always polite and professional. Of course, that can be easier said than done when you’re dealing with an irate customer. But remember, everything you say will be public, so it’s important to take the high road.

First and foremost, always apologize for the customer’s bad experience. Even if it wasn’t your fault, they need to know that you’re sorry. Then, do your best to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. If necessary, reach out to the customer privately to get more information or offer compensation. And whatever you do, don’t get defensive or attack the customer.

5. Be Clear and Concise

Twitter is a limited-character platform, so you need to be clear and concise when responding to customer complaints. This means that you need to avoid long paragraphs and complicated language. Stick to the facts and keep your responses short and sweet.

Remember, customers are busy and they don’t have time to read a novel. Your goal should be to resolve the issue as quickly as possible so that the customer can move on.

6. Be Transparent

Transparency is key when it comes to customer complaints. If you’re not transparent, customers will lose trust in your company. When it comes to Twitter, transparency means being open and honest about what went wrong and what you’re doing to fix it.

Make sure that you provide regular updates on the progress of the resolution. This will show customers that you’re taking their complaints seriously and that you’re working hard to resolve the issue.

7. Train Your Staff

It’s important to train your staff on how to handle customer complaints on Twitter. First, make sure your staff is aware of the importance of customer service on social media. They need to understand that every customer complaint is an opportunity to turn a negative situation into a positive one.

Next, provide them with some guidelines for how to handle customer complaints. For example, tell them to always be polite and never engage in arguments with customers. They should also try to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

8. Keep a Record of Complaints

It’s important to keep track of customer complaints, no matter where they’re coming from. And with more and more people using Twitter to voice their grievances, it’s essential to know how to keep a record of complaints on the platform.

There are a few different ways you can go about this. First, you can set up a Google Alert for your business name or customer service Twitter handle. This will send you an email anytime someone mentions your business on Twitter, which makes it easy to keep track of any complaints that are posted.

Another option is to use a tool like Hootsuite Insights, which allows you to track all mentions of your business on social media, including Twitter. This makes it easy to see all the customer complaints in one place and quickly address them.

You can also use a customer service tool like Zendesk or Desk.com to track customer complaints. This will allow you to see all the interactions between your company and individual customers, including complaints.

No matter which method you choose, it’s important to track customer complaints so you can learn from your mistakes and improve your customer service.

9. Use Twitter’s Customer Service Features

Twitter offers several customer service features that can help you resolve customer complaints more quickly and efficiently. For example, you can use Twitter’s built-in search feature to find tweets about your business. This will make it easy to see all the complaints that have been posted about your company.

You can also use Twitter’s customer service features to send Direct Messages to customers. This allows you to resolve customer complaints privately, without having to post public updates.

Finally, you can use Twitter’s built-in reporting tools to flag abusive or harassing tweets. This will help you protect your company from online abuse and harassment.

10. Take it Offline

Sometimes, it’s necessary to take customer complaints offline. This means that you need to stop responding to tweets and start communicating with the customer through other channels, like email or phone.

There are a few reasons why you might want to take a complaint offline. Maybe the customer is being abusive or harassing. Or maybe the issue is too complex to resolve on Twitter.

Whatever the reason, make sure that you communicate with the customer in a way that is convenient for them. And always make sure to keep track of any offline conversations so that you can follow up on them later.

The Benefits of Handling Complaints on Twitter

When it comes to customer complaints, Twitter can be a powerful tool. In an age where social media dominates the conversation, customers are increasingly likely to take to Twitter to voice their grievances. And while this may seem like a bad thing, it can actually be an opportunity for businesses to build customer loyalty.

When handled properly, customer complaints on Twitter can help businesses to build trust and credibility. First, it shows that businesses are listening to their customers and are willing to take action in response to their concerns. Secondly, it provides an opportunity for businesses to demonstrate their customer service skills in public. By responding quickly and effectively to customer complaints on Twitter, businesses can show the world that they care about their customers and are committed to providing excellent customer service.

Simply by posting a comment on Twitter, customer opinion can now reach thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of people in the space of minutes. Unfortunately, if that comment is negative, the more likely it is to be re-tweeted and spread far and wide across the internet.

According to a recent article by Social Times, many companies are failing to adequately address the concerns their customers are posting on social media, citing poor response times and a lack of understanding or appreciation of the problem as being the main issues.

So, if you want to connect with your customers on Twitter, here are my top tips to getting it right.

It’s all about engagement

Just because you can’t see you customers face-to-face, it’s important to make an effort to get to know them. Social media is, after all “social”; it’s all about interaction and communication.

The more you interact with your customers online, the better your relationship will be. So if someone sends you a tweet, reply, and, more importantly, don’t take three days to do it. If someone retweets your message, thank them and strike up a conversation; they’re much more likely to start following what you do more closely if they think you care. You can start your following in a massive way to hire the growth service. You can do it county wise. For instance, you can buy USA Twitter followers if you stay there.

It’s important to react to all the posts you see, not just the negative ones. Positivity generates positivity, so always spread the good news too. And not just yours, your customer’s too.

It’s all about the timing

Customer Service is all about timing.The main issue with complaint handling on social media seems to be the time it takes to get a response. Many negative situations have grown out of all proportion simply because the customer didn’t get a timely response.

Twitter is a real-time medium, so it’s no good responding to something a week after the original comment was posted. If you were in a shop and complained to one of the staff members, you wouldn’t expect them to get back to you two hours later; you’d want a response there and then.

Treat social media the same way; monitor what’s being said and when, and make sure you get on top of the situation as quickly as possible. We’ve seen a number of potentially damaging conversations ending on a positive note, simply because of the rapid response time.

It’s all about what you say

Twitter is limited to 140 characters, so providing a comprehensive response to a customer query or complaint is clearly not possible. However, opening up a line of communication is all that’s required at this stage, so a simple “we’re sorry to hear that, how can we put it right” is usually enough to get the conversation going in a more positive direction.

Although you may not want others to see your conversation, you have to remember that the original complaint is already out there and there’s nothing you can do about it, so you might as well let the world know you’re doing your best to put things right. Other users may want to follow the conversation to see how you handle it – another opportunity to get a positive result if it’s done properly.

Some conversations are indeed better kept private, but just as customers hate being passed from department to department over the phone, they don’t take to kindly to being given the run-around online, so trying to keep the communication on one platform is the best plan.

If you really need to take it “off air”, it’s worth bearing in mind that Twitter is going to increase the number of characters possible in direct messages to 10,000, so you can always follow each other and try to resolve the situation that way.

As with everything social media related, it’s about communication, communication, and then communication.

It’s all about understanding

Seeing a negative comment about your business on Twitter is never pleasant and it’s easy to take offense and jump right in there with a response, but my advice would be one word; DON’T!

It’s worth taking the time to get to the root of the problem and not just read the complaint and then tweet. Customers often complain in the heat of the moment – it’s almost a knee-jerk reaction at times – and what they actually moan about is not the main reason they were dissatisfied in the first place.

Open up the dialogue and find out what the real problem is. If you take the time at this point, the resolution will be much quicker in the long run, trust me. And, going back to the first point, it’ll really help with your customer engagement.

It’s all about making it personal

I actually saw a response to a customer complaint on Twitter last week that simply said “Please take a look at our FAQ page for the answer to your problem”

Fantastic! I bet that customer really feels important now!

Creating a great customer experience is all about making it personal, and that applies to online service too. You have to remember that every customer is unique, with their own reasons for using your business and their very own reasons for not being happy. Treating them all the same will not endear you too them. You have to take the time to craft an individual response to what is, after all an experience that is unique to that customer.

It’s all about showing that you care

As one businessman quoted last week “It’s only one customer, we’ve got millions to deal with, we can’t respond to everyone individually” Well, I see his point, but ignore that single complain at your peril. Social media has the ability to send it viral and before you know it, those millions of other customers will also know how bad your service is – not from the original complaint (as that might be a flash in the pan) but by the way you handle it.

Let’s face it, your business would be nothing without your customers and you need to look after every single one of them if you don’t want them all to disappear. Ignore one and you could soon find you have none!

Great customer service is perhaps the most important tool one can use to generate not only new but repeat business through improving customer loyalty and retention. Since so much business is virtual in this day and age, you have to make sure that you know how to respond if things start to go wrong. Clearly, you can’t prevent people from posting negative comments in the first place.

How you deal with them can make a big difference in the overall experience, and can make or break your online reputation. Social Media is a powerful tool. Make sure you use it wisely.

By all means use Twitter to handle your customer service, but make sure you do it properly to ensure complaints are handled correctly and in a timely manner.

We’ve all had a customer service horror to tell in our time but when Hasan Syed took to Twitter to complain about the customer service he’d received from British Airways when they lost his father’s luggage, he decided to do more than tweet it to his own friends and followers.

He opted – perfectly legally – to pay to have his tweet promoted – sending it to the top of the airlines Twitter feed and the feeds of related companies across the world.

Six hours after the tweet went live and before the airline had responded personally to Mr Syed, it had been picked up by websites, read by thousands, retweeted and commented on.

It took the airline another four hours to pick up on it. “Sorry for the delay in responding, our twitter feed is open 09:00-17:00 GMT. Please DM [direct message] your baggage ref and we’ll look into this.”

Twitter is a channel where customers expect quick responses 24/7. It is no longer a 9-5 world- especially when it comes to social media, and companies, particularly those that operate globally and therefore 24/7, need to be available at all hours.

Mr Syed’s use of Twitter has highlighted the need for real time routing for tweets. Real time routing provides a social media customer care solution that automates the processes of listening to what people are saying, analysing posts, and prioritising and routing them to the right people. An organization can then respond in the right way to strengthen the customer relationship and brand and limit the damage.

With a real time routing solution, a company can integrate social media interactions across marketing and customer service, maintaining a single customer service conversation.