5.7 Breaking Bad News on Social Media
When someone complains about you or your company on social media, you might be tempted to ignore it. Unfortunately, the conversation about your company will continue whether or not you respond, so responding allows you to control the message.
Example
Let’s say that a customer, Amir, posted on X that the watch your company sold him broke within a week. Your goal is to help resolve Amir’s complaint and show that your watch company has excellent customer service. Getting into a back-and-forth exchange with Amir will make you look unprofessional, so the best thing to do is reply to Amir with a short message: “Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Please follow me so we can DM (direct message) each other and find a solution. Or, you can email me at ___.”
Hopefully, this will take the conversation offline so you can resolve it. It may turn out that Amir’s watch is under warranty, and you can repair or replace it. Or maybe Amir broke his watch in a way that’s not covered. You can break the bad news discreetly using the strategy above.
Attribution
“Breaking Bad News on Social Media” from Business Writing For Everyone by Arley Cruthers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
