If you’re active on social media, sooner or later, you’re going to get some harsh, negative comments about your products. How will you handle them? What’s the best way to get out of that situation unscathed? Hopefully, we can help you figure out what tod do when one of your customers voices a strong negative criticism on any social media site.

The most important thing to remember when someone posts negative comments about your products, or about your company is to stay calm. If you get worked up over it, you may wind up saying something publicly that you’ll regret later. You never want to give your customers the impression that you’re hot headed, or foul tempered. That means that, even if they’re really getting under your skin, you have to stay polite, and courteous.

It’s important to use the right mix of public and private communication with the angry customer. Start off by messaging them privately, and then shoot them a public message letting them know that you’re sorry they’re having problems, and you have messaged them privately to talk, and work the issue out. By offering up that public message, you’re letting other users know that you take your negative criticisms seriously. That’s where your public communication with the upset customer should stop. If your product is sound, your satisfied customers will most likely stand up for you, and sing your product’s praises. If you spend a lot of time saying positive things about your product, it may make you seem desperate or defensive.

Once you’re dealing privately with your angry customer, remember to stay calm, and hear their side of the story. Their problem might not seem important to you, but it is to them, so do your best to put yourself in their shoes, and try to understand why they’re upset. If you only skim their messages and don’t take them seriously, you’re just going to make the problem worse, and damage your reputation. Try to find a cost effective solution that will make the customer content. Sometimes, that might be a discount on a future purchase. Sometimes that might be a full, or partial refund. Remember, almost anything is better than bad publicity, and in a world where anyone can share their opinion with a lot of other people easily, it’s all too easy to get bad publicity from one upset customer.

So remember, stay calm, start the conversation publicly, and finish it privately, and you can turn an angry customer into a satisfied one. By doing so, you’ll also save yourself some bad publicity.