The internet plays a major role in people’s lives. It governs the way that they interact with friends and family members on their birthdays, connects communities around similar interests, and even affects the way they interact with businesses and brands. When things are going well, the internet seems like a harmonious tool that really connects communities and brings people together. However, the internet can also expose how people really feel about certain topics, and your business is unfortunately not immune to negativity online. 

Some companies are shocked to learn that their customers are sharing negative information about their experiences and interactions with brands online. If you fall into this category, here’s what you should know about negative Tweets and what you can do about it.

Twitter amplifies customers’ voices

While Twitter’s user base is not as massive as Facebook’s, Twitter users still have a lot of power. For one, the platform boasts 126 million users. Especially when you factor in that about a third of Twitter users tweet about an experience at a business every week, this number begins to take a different kind of shape. Since there are fifty-two weeks in a year, that means that, in an average year, about 2162 million tweets are sent out about a specific brand, service, or product. 

The result is a public online platform where damaging hashtags and retweets can start to trend and even become highlighted in other users’ feeds regardless of whether or not they follow you or the user who tweeted them. Tweets from users about long hold times with companies like AT&T, negative customer service experiences with Comcast, and delays with airlines like United, frequently show up in others’ feeds. As a result of all of this amplified negativity, it’s important that your business has a strategy to combat such matters online in a quick and effective manner.

Head to the root of the problem to fix it

While it would be easy to blame customer behavior or platforms like Twitter on these issues, at the root of each of the above situations is a problem that the company caused. If you can identify, diagnose, and address the problem that caused these issues and approach potentially-contentious interactions (like wait times or flight delays) with the right attitude, you can begin to decrease the likelihood that your customers will vent about you on their social media accounts. 

Using Sales force call center software is one way to begin to address these problems, because of the power it gives both support agents and administrators. For example, by integrating with Salesforce, your agents have tools at their fingertips that allow them to view a customer’s previous call history and how support fielded their claims in the past. If this is the third time a customer has called about their cable outage, you can reference previous calls, acknowledging the frustrations that such outages must be causing them. This empathy can go a long way in calming down irate customers, and is possible only when you have a system that empowers your agents to build upon customer data to form positive interactions. Similarly, the right call center software solution can be useful in monitoring agent performance, as records can be created and accessed by managers and administrators to learn more about how agents are implementing your company’s best practices.

Rather than blame the source of negative feedback, instead look to the source of that negativity. Often times, negative tweets can be an important part of an audit of your customer satisfaction and customer service. By leveraging negative tweets to learn more about how you can improve practices in your business, you can ultimately convert negative tweets into positive tweets, fostering your brand as a company that values and respects its customers.