How to Apologize on Social Media

An eBook for Marketing, Operations, and Customer Service Professionals Brought to you by newBrandAnalytics

Never Ruin An Apology With An Excuse

Executive Overview

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Authenticity is the golden rule when apologizing for a bad customer experience. It is also the golden rule of social media. In the fast paced, constantly growing world of social media, apologizing is critical in order to maintain your online reputation. However, social media apologies are not always easy. You want the largest possible audience to see your apology but you have limited space to really voice your regret. This eBook provides you with the strategies to make the most genuine and impactful apologies on Twitter, Facebook, and review sites in order to maintain your online reputation.

Why Is Apologizing So Important?

Social Media Minimizes Damage Every day thousands of reviews, tweets and comments are posted about your business on social media and not all of them are complimentary. Responding to negative mentions of your business can be intimidating, especially in a forum as public as social media. But research shows that 4 out of 5 people will revise their purchasing decision after looking at online reviews. That means that publicly apologizing to negative reviews is more critical than ever in order to increase revenue and customer loyalty. With social intelligence, you can compile all of your negative reviews in one place. Now you’ll never miss the opportunity to recover from a customer’s negative experience.

Social Media Intelligence for Online Reputation Management Marketers and Operations use Social Intelligence to improve their brand’s reputation and drive increased revenue and brand loyalty. Unsolicited customer feedback can give you real information on where your business needs to improve. And when you make these changes, you’re taking the first step to creating the best possible customer experience.

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68% of users say the presence of a management response to negative reviews sways them towards purchasing from that company. 34% of customers delete their negative review, or write a revision, after the company reaches out to them with an apology. Between one and three negative reviews is all is takes to deter the majority of shoppers from purchasing a product or service.

Now is the time

to correct bad

experiences

Take advantage of this information

and recover from negative reviews

now. Don’t let a competitor’s

apology outshine you.

The Numbers Speak for Themselves

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Different Strokes for Different Folks

•  140 Character Limit •  Usage of Hashtags •  175 Million tweets posted

daily •  Brief, quick chats •  Communicating with

people you don’t know well

•  Nearly unlimited characters

•  Usage of Hashtags •  699 Million daily active

users •  Directly engaging

people you know well •  Best for sharing media

•  Long form •  Online reviews •  Communicating with

influencers •  Unsolicited feedback

Differences amongst social sites mean that your strategy for apologizing needs to be specifically tailored to how the site is used by

your customers.

Social Media Apologies for Twitter

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Don’t Miss What Matters Twitter

While this tweet had no reference to the brand, it depicts a tweet with a serious complaint. Fortunately, Pier 1 was on the ball and seized a great opportunity for customer recovery.

With nearly 3,200 tweets sent every minute, it is critical that you don’t let your customer’s complaint get lost in the shuffle. Use social media intelligence to monitor for certain words or hashtags on Twitter that mention your brand. Additionally, since Twitter is updated at a rapid pace, it is important to use alerts to help you quickly find any negative mentions of your business.

Once you’ve found the negative reviews, you need to make sure that you grab their attention as well as the attention of other users on Twitter. Click reply to reply directly to the tweeter who left the negative comment. To get more viewership on your apology, put a character or extra word in front of their Twitter handle. If you do not do this, Twitter will think it is a personal conversation and will only make the tweet readily available to your account and the user you tweeted at.

Don’t Get Lost in the Noise

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Extend your reach by apologizing first and then mentioning who you are apologizing to in the latter half of the tweet. This provides significantly more exposure.

Twitter

The art of fitting an apology into 140 characters comes from harnessing maximum readability and maximum retweetability. Eliminate any overly emotional words that are extras. While they may feel more genuine they are actually just taking up valuable space that you could be using to show how you’re fixing the problem. Also shoot to get the customer’s contact info.

The Art of 140

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As you can see, this tweet was cut off due to its length and the included photo. Not only that, but because it was cut off, the message takes a mildly inappropriate turn. To avoid this, Marissa should have removed the “Photo” at the beginning of the tweet as well as other extraneous words in this tweet. She could have written: “Yahoo to acquire Tumblr! Customers delight.”

To learn more about how to write the perfect apology tweet,

Twitter

visit us here

Now it’s time to make sure you follow up. Open a case with your support team or if you are the support team, make sure this task doesn’t get lost. An apology without follow through is as good as an empty promise.

Follow Up and Follow Through

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It’s better to follow up excessively than not at all. Zappos takes the time to respond to a customer who is in need of service. While this customer was already helped, this effort by Zappos was obviously appreciated. The customer was so satisfied with the help she received, in response she paid Zappos a public compliment.

Twitter

Social Media Apologies for Facebook

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Reach Out Publicly, Then Take It Offline

After publicly promising a resolution, reach out to the customer via a private Facebook message. This message should include a phone number or email address where they can contact customer service. With this method, you publicly demonstrate that you care about customer service and take the next step to solve the issue and create a happy customer.

One important part of a social media apology is to make sure as many users as possible can see it. On Facebook only people who like your page will see an apology from your brand that you write as a comment. To extend the reach of your apology use a hashtag and like additional comments that users make on the original comment.

Once you and the customer have found a satisfactory resolution, write a post on their Facebook wall thanking them for their input. This shows that you appreciate customer input while bringing recognition to the fact that you took their feedback to heart and resolved their issue.

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Keep Issues Visible

It can seem like negative reviews will damage your brand. But, on a Facebook page, where numerous comments are visible, a page that only has positive comments looks unrealistic. Furthermore, you run the risk of increasing the anger of an already disgruntled customer if you delete their comment. Instead, look at this as a PR opportunity. When you apologize to a customer’s comment on Facebook you’re likely addressing people who are already loyal customers and, therefore, you must show you care to maintain their loyalty. This is your chance to change the tone of the conversation to something that favors your brand. If you ignore it, you’re only letting the anger grow.

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ChapStick angered a large group of their customer base after they deleted many Facebook comments on their page complaining about an offensive ad. Their customers were already upset about the ad, and this action only made a bad situation worse.

Social Media Apologies for Review Sites

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Keep It Positive

Star ratings can be misleading. Statistics show that almost three quarters of one star ratings contain positive comments. When you’re apologizing for a negative experience on review sites, be sure to call out the positive aspects of the negative review. Now, when a user sees your apology, they also see that there were positive aspects to the customer experience. This tactic demonstrates the strengths of your business, turning a negative into a positive.

Review Sites

Social media intelligence will help you find and respond to the positive comments in a negative review. This review, while only one star, contains complimentary information about the hotel. This is a great opportunity to make the positives shine while going into recovery mode for the remainder of the review.

Face The Negatives Head On

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After you highlight the positives, make sure you acknowledge the negatives. Stress that this is an atypical experience at your location. Since engagement isn’t as seamless on reviews sites as it is on social media sites, you should have already researched the root of the issue before commenting. Tell the customer you know where the problem came from and what you’ll do to resolve it. Keep in mind, when you respond to negative comments on review sites that helps to increase your ranking.

If you suspect that a review is false or if the

information mentioned is blatantly false, you can

try to contact review sites and ask them to remove

the false review.

Review Sites

Don’t Be ‘Defensive Guy’

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This example is exactly what NOT to do. The restaurant owner is offensive to the customer and likely has offended countless others as a result. The restaurant owner should have apologized and vowed to work with his staff. Additionally, the owner missed the opportunity to thank them for the positive compliment about the food. The owner should have thanked them and acknowledged that there is always room for improvement when it comes to service.

Review Sites

Apologies Make a Difference:

Examples of Social Media Apologies

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Garces Restaurant Group reached out to her to apologize for her negative experience and uncover what was driving it. After this conversation, the operations team at Tinto discovered that they were preparing the red Sangria incorrectly. With this apology Garces was able to catch and correct a recipe error, ultimately a win for the guest and for Garces. Furthermore, the guest was extremely happy that someone responded to her, and, with that, another loyal guest was created.

Turning Yuck To Yum  Garces Restaurant Group, located in Philadelphia, used social media intelligence to uncover an error in preparation. They had a guest who had previously dined at their Amada location and loved the red Sangria. However, her experience at their other property, Tinto, with the same drink, was less than satisfactory. The guest mentioned on an online review site that they didn’t care for the red Sangria and that they preferred the one at Amada.

Make No Apologies, Keep No Customers

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On the 12th anniversary of September 11th, Esquire Magazine made a noticeable mistake of placing the infamous “Falling Man” image next to a headline about making your morning commute more stylish. Needless to say, this received a very negative reaction from social media. Although this was likely just a glitch on their website Esquire made this apology.

With this response Esquire was likely trying to follow its brand image of a hip, snarky tone that is normally present in its tweets. However, the tone of the apology was not well received, to say the least. Viewers took the apology as condescending and completely insincere. This was especially bad when the apology related to a topic that users have a reaction to that is incredibly emotional. If Esquire had simply explained the technical glitch, with a genuine apology, they could have moved on from this bad PR situation. Instead, they added fuel to the fire an angered a significantly larger number of people and made the situation last longer than it needed to.

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JCPenney Makes a Social Media Apology Tour  

JCPenney lost a third of its customer in 2012 due to a failed revamp. In an effort to win back customers, JCPenney publicly admitted its wrong doing and used social media as a main venue to apologize. JCPenney actively noted that they didn’t listen to the desire of their customers and want to change.

They started with the hashtag #JCPListens. Now they are using social media to stay in constant communication with customers to demonstrate that they are listening and ask customers what they want to see in store. They are making these efforts across a variety of social sites, and customers are voicing their appreciation that they’re being heard.

JCPenney asked fans with Facebook polls what their favorite brands were, many of which were cut in the

revamp. Once they determined that St. John’s Bay was most popular they took action and brought the brand

back in store.

Key Takeaways

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Universal Rules For Social Media Apologies

1.  Authenticity is the golden rule of apologies both online and offline. Be genuine in what you say and don’t give a cookie cutter apology.

2.  Resolve the issues brought to your attention by the customer. Don’t just say you’ll fix it, actually do it.

3.  Give the person who left the review something to look forward to for the next time they visit you. Get their contact information and send them a personal message.

4.  Encourage your team to learn from customers, fix problems quickly, and ask for more online reviews.

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newBrandAnalytics offers free trials of our Social Intelligence solutions, allowing you to monitor your online reputation and engage directly with your customers. Start reaping the benefits of a proven social engagement strategy today.

www.newBrandAnalytics.com/freetrial