What do you do when your Facebook fan page falls into the hands of an angry mob? For starters, don’t lose your cool. Okay, then what?Jeffery Grau, author of a report by eMarketer that looks at successful and not-so-successful social media responses to angry customers, says there are three main ways big brands usually respond when the public loses attacks:

1) Respond to the criticism

2) Stay silent so your angry customers and loyal fans can battle it out

3) Simply remove the negative comments from your page

Unfortunately, many companies have a knee-jerk reaction to negative posts. Remember the Nestle fiasco back in March? The confectioner simply started deleting negative posts by Greenpeace and directly counter-attacking persistent posters. This only fueled the fire, and Nestle had to post several apologies for their actions before things started to calm down. In this forum it’s all about freedom of expression, so using tactic #3 may be risky.

Staying silent might not be such a good idea either. When Vodafone started making some job cuts and their union got upset, they avoided taking the traditional  ”unresponsive mobile operator” approach. Instead, they opened some of those lost jobs to their social media marketing department to streamline customer service on Twitter, to much success.

The most successful tact is a quick and thorough response, as Boeing is being credited for today. They upset an 8-year-old boy for not taking his fan letter seriously, so they set up a twitter account and admitted they were still novice at social media engagement with their public. They promised to be a more “human” company and interact with their customers. People loved it.

Between Nestle and now Boeing, it’s becoming clear there is right and wrong way to deal with angry customers teeming on your Facebook page or blasting you on Twitter – respond to them in a professional, yet very human, way. People using social media are human, after all, and they expect a response from another human being if the transgression merits. Companies would be wise to let consumers know you understand their qualms and that you are taking their concerns very seriously.

Pretend that your Facebook page is your retail store and the angry posters were saying this stuff right in your face. Would you ignore them? Kick them out? Yell at them? No. You would thank them and tell them how important they are to improving the company’s everyday operation.

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