By Jeff B. Copeland on September 21st, 2011

6 Tips to Handle Customer Service and Complaints on Facebook

Just like your phone, your Facebook page is open for business 24/7 and you can expect some customer service questions and even complaints to show up on your Wall at any time. Sure, you can delete them, but unless the comments are really nasty, they can do you more good than harm.

By showing your customers that you are willing to respond quickly and fairly, you can build trust and grow your business. Facebook makes customer service easier because customers can get their questions answered just by reading your page.

Follow these tips to effectively handle customer service issues on Facebook:

Answer quickly. Facebook can email you when a post goes on your Wall. Acknowledge the question on Facebook, even if you can’t answer it immediately, so users can see that you’re on the case.
Take if offline. Rather than letting a question or complaint play out in public, give the customer your phone number and name and ask them to call to give a full explanation. You’ll find that satisfied customers may go back to your Facebook page to thank you publicly.
Be ready to answer frequently asked questions. Keep a log of the questions and have written answers ready for the common ones, including links to relevant pages on your company website. Add another page (a tab) to your Facebook site to display a list of FAQs.
Ask customers to answer other customers. “Anybody else seen this problem?” If you get your customers helping each other, you’re really taking full advantage of social media.
Be proactive. Remember, visitors to your Wall will see customer service questions mixed in with other comments. Get out ahead of customer service issues by monitoring your reputation online through Google searches or reputation management tools and addressing problems on your Facebook page before your customers do.
Listen carefully. Responding to the immediate problem may be the first order of business, but the questions and comments on Facebook also give you important clues about how to improve and grow your business.