4 ways to respond with webcare
In general, there are 4 ways to respond to all kinds of questions, complains and compliments. There are no exact rules on which way of responding is the best in which situation. This is exactly why webcare is also something that requires a lot of knowledge of human nature.
1. React directly with an appropriate response
The first way you can respond to your customers, fans or followers is to react directly with an appropriate response. For example, thank someone for their compliments, answer to a simple question or ask someone to take an action. It’s a myth that you should only react to negative messages about your brand, company or products. By responding to positive comments you’ll show your customers that you truly care about them and not only about your own reputation. That’s exactly why it’s called webcare, the perfect way to take care of your costumers and to connect to them on a one on one basis.
2. Let people know that you come back to them
Sometimes you need to do some research before you can answer some ones question properly. In this case, you should always let people know that you’re working on it. Otherwise, it will look like you’re ignoring their complains or question. If you need some more personal information before you can answer their question, ask them to send you a private message with the information you need. Also with complains this is a good way to handle them. You’ll show to the rest of your customers that you take them seriously and if it gets out of hand you’ll be able to keep it more private.
3. Take immediate action
It’s also possible to take immediate action after a comment, for example if they ask you to change a spelling mistake in your blog post. This option is the best to choose if you know for sure that the action doesn’t have any big consequences. After you’ve taken action, you can thank the person that attended you on the mistake (or whatever other action you had to take) to finish the costumer experience.
4. Don’t respond at all
In some of the situations it’s the best choice not to respond at all. For example, if someone attacks you on a personal level without any relevance or people just react to your new campaign or something like that. You can’t react to anyone, so make sure that you make the right choices while you’re practicing webcare.
Webcare is just as important as SEO text and is called the art of knowing how to respond and when to respond. If you make the right decision, it can create a lot of new opportunities or a boost for your reputation, but if you choose wrong it can have a lot of consequences. When you’re responding to comments, for example on Facebook, we’d recommend to respond to the complains and irritated comments at first. Not only do these people not like to wait, when you respond to them first and to the positive comments later, these will end up higher in the comment section. Don’t wait too long with responding to comments. If you need to do some research before you can answer some ones question, at least let them know that you’ve received their message and that your working on it. This way people won’t feel ignored. Please let us know if we forgot something and keep in mind: ‘Although it’s called webCARE, you shouldn’t care personally about how mean people can be online!’