Nowadays no company is immune from receiving an online attack, and not only performed by hackers. Nowadays, anyone having a social profile can complain about something on the social media to raise awareness of a specific question. This type of dissatisfaction expression may harm any brand and seriously compromise its online reputation.
Many of these problems are sometimes fake, offensive and aggressive, putting at risk the reputation of a person or a brand just by an impulse. The way in which we handle these complaints will be crucial to maintain our brand image.
What steps should we follow to manage an online attack or crisis? It is very important to know how we should proceed, but it will be even more important to anticipate ourselves and take measures so that an incident like that does not happen again.
Anger is always counterproductive, so under no circumstance should we lose our temper. A wrong management could will only increase the importance of the crisis or the criticism impact. We must stay calm and manage our response by examining all aspects.
We must take into account who is manifesting the criticism, identify their social media profiles and try to understand their personality or manners in order to determine the tone or type of response we are going to provide. In addition, it is important to weigh if it is worth responding to certain offensive comments.
If the crisis was caused by an error of the company, we will have to try to solve it quickly and efficiently and, in this way, return to normal as soon as possible. The possible damages caused ca be compensated through some type of incentive or reward.
It is important that we assess the damage caused and identify how brand reputation may be affected.
The best way to learn about the experience is to evaluate exactly what happened and establish the correct procedure to avoid it from repeating, or how to manage the situation properly and reduce its negative impact on the brand.
