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 gives you an opportunity to control the message.

Let’s say that a customer, Amir, posted on Twitter that the watch your company sold him broke within a week. Your goal is to help resolve Amir’s complaint and also show that your watch company has great customer service. Getting into a back-and-forth exchange with Amir will make you look unprofessional, so the best thing to do is to reply to Amir with a short message like: “Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Please follow me so that 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 that you can resolve it. Maybe it will 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 using the strategies above in a private manner.