Customer Retention - A Story Of an Angry Troller Becoming a Loyal Customer
We have all heard and read a lot about the trollers. People who are unhappy about something around them, even if it doesn’t concern them, would like to put up their opinions but not in the nicest possible manner, thereby making it sound more like a touch of sarcasm or a rude comment with a huge intent of hurting the other person/ persons involved is the core characteristics of a troller.
These trolls might be the people who are upset with something and that is why they are taking a sarcastic turn on things to express their opinions hoping they might be heard when they are angry. These also might be the people who just want to be seen and they have no real impact on anything happening around them and they aren’t very sure about the things they are commentating or trolling about but they are very keen on being seen and they do not want to compromise on their need to fame even if they have to mean to others.
Now why am I explaining the difference between the two?
That’s because each of these has to be dealt with differently. The ones who have been upset with you or someone for some reason because the act has hurt them are genuine people who can be somewhat right and thus, as a business, you don’t fight with them. You hear them out, you listen to their complaints and if possible try to solve it or else apologize to them for being wrong or the reason for their agony.
The people who are just doing this for their fun are the real trollers and they need to be replied with a proper befitting reply so that they do not dare this stunt with someone else also. These are the situations wherein our knowledge of crisis management kicks in.
What is Crisis Management?
If we take a literal meaning, crisis management is the term for a situation that wasn’t supposed to be. Someone has to use their brains and make sure that no one can cause more damage than already.
Crisis management is all about handling a poor situation in the best possible way so that the least damages are inflicted upon anyone concerned and the crisis is also resolved with no pending actions.
So if there is someone who is trying to malign or tarnish your image by talking about you in negative terms and it is almost an unwanted troll, you should deploy the first tactic of managing the crisis which is to dodge the most obvious bullet and run towards the danger to stop them from creating crisis.
So, for the second type of people, the better way to manage them is to approach them directly and call them out but in the most pleasant manner. Do not engage with them to give them a boost. Send them a message directly and talk to them. If you cannot message them, then delete the comment, or else, send them a message and ask them to review their action otherwise you can call their bluff and even directly inform them that they can be put under the radar by pressing online hate crime charges against them.
So How Did We Manage Our Crisis of An Angry Troller?
We had a Diwali advertisement running on our social media that said, “Get your worship aided with our expert solutions, great products of excellent quality, and an unparalleled focus on intricacy to detail for packing your order.”
We have experimented with a lot of lines and settled over this because we knew what we promised was what we were able to provide.
After the promotion took off, there was a person who decided to fish out all our posts on all social media platforms, personal and professional, and he started trolling us by writing “Do not buy from these guys. They are frauds and did not ship my order to me. I got something else and I ordered something else. They are frauds and cheaters.”
Now he was copy-pasting this on all of our posts across all platforms. I opened social media when my phone started buzzing a lot due to notifications by the minute and found that in the middle of the day, this person had started an all-out attack.
Normally, my first instinct was to check with the name of the customer and check for the status of the couriers as in has the shipment been delivered? If yes then when? What was sent to this person? All details. If I find the details, I call directly. We resolved the issue and requested that those comments be removed.
Suppose we don’t get the details from the information over the messages sent, we try to ask the customer themselves. What is your issue? What did you order? When? May I please have your order number? If you have received the delivery then there has to be a delivery Challan or a proof of delivery or shipment label or delivery message or delivery mail, anything?
If we get these details from the person, we again call and clear the misunderstanding so that they can remove the negative reviews.
More often than not, this works like a charm. Either the person realizes they sent the message to the wrong business or we realize that something wrong happened with their order.
I promise the latter is very very rare but yes it has happened because to err is human.
The most challenging part is when the person who places the mean comments is not sure of the messages and then they do not desire to reply to your direct messages or calls out to them for a request to remove their comments.
This is when we make sure that if we can delete their comments, we delete the same. If we cannot delete it and after asking them multiple times, they still fail to reply or take action, we directly call their ID out in public making others also aware and talking about how those IDs need to be avoided.
With this also if the person is not able to make matters better, then we make sure to ban them block them, or restrict them from our page. All this makes sure that other people are also aware of the fact that someone is trying to bully or harass the content creators and they can reach out to them with a warning.
With this customer, we didn’t find any details of the order sent, so we asked him on personal messages if he could share any details.
Rather than responding to us there, he kept commenting on every single post of ours without stopping. So we decided to meet him where he wanted to.
We tagged him in his comments and asked him if he could share proof that he ordered from us in the form of the order number and the proof of delivery label on the shipment.
This might have caught his attention as he stopped commenting on the remaining posts and replied to the public comment with a number that didn’t look anything like an order number, an image of products that didn’t look like our products and a packaging that didn’t look our packaging at all.
We instantly replied with a demand to share the image of the delivery label on the shipment packet because it was quite evident that he had ordered from someone else.
Thankfully, this person was in such an anger that he complied almost immediately.
The moment we saw the delivery label, it was clear that the shipment came from a low-level, poor quality, cheap price selling company and they had multiple poor reviews about it, for which they didn’t even care.
Now it was our turn to return the favor for this much wrongful spamming. So we wrote a message talking about the confusion he created by ordering from someplace else and then complaining the wrong way how it affected our mental peace and image in public and how his spamming made us look bad in the eyes of all our followers.
Suddenly, the realization dawned upon this person and he replied with a proper apology and even confirmed that he would be deleting all his comments within the next 10 minutes.
Within the next 30 minutes or so, he deleted all his comments from all our posts across all platforms and even wrote an apology on a public front.
After this was handled, I wrote to him in a direct message if he was ready to give us a chance and try our products after he found out that the people in the market were not making things better. He instantly replied that he needed some time to think.
Over a few weeks here and there, he kept enquiring about 2-3 products and was hung up on something. Eventually, he requested us to share a credit card link so that he could dispute payment if the product received wasn’t good quality and we denied helping him.
We knew this was murky waters as this could mean we have to compromise on product and money also after it product gets delivered as the customer might claim something just for the sake of it.
But you know what? It was too late to say no, so we took the risk and we provided with the credit card link for payment.
We fast-tracked the order and we decided to wish for the best with the risk taken as we knew we couldn’t be matched within product quality.
When the product was delivered, we waited for over 48 hours and then we knew we had this customer in our bank. We sent a thank you mail personalized to this customer with a feedback link and we were stunned to have his feedback as a 5-star review with all but our appreciation for product quality and service.
Inference?
When there is a crisis, you can act upon your gut instinct and try to evade the attack. But if there is even a single chance that things can be amended instead of bad blood, make sure to not just clear the air but also bring out an image of letting the bygones be bygones by forgiving and forgetting.
This might add to your balance sheet and maybe one day, you’ll realize that you had helped yourself by just breathing once before acting out.
Conclusion
Fighting makes things hard. You might even lose the credibility that you have preserved because of one integrity fight that was not even needed. So sometimes, if you back down and try thinking about the choices a little differently, who knows spam might also turn into a loyal 5-star rating-giving customer.
Are you interested in knowing more about business, D2C, religion, and spirituality? Do let us know as we would love to share our opinions with you. We write all that we desire to share at wa.me/918542929702 or info@rudrakshahub.com and we shall be happy to accommodate your thoughts and ideas in this as well. Until then, have a great time ahead, keep reading, and continue worshipping with Rudraksha Hub..!!
