Throughout this article, I have discussed reasons for dealing with the negativity that may or may not come with your business blog. Dealing with negativity requires that you make a change, often at the deepest levels of your company. Ask yourself what promises your company makes and how any negative issues that crop up reflect on those promises. Having a promise and standing by it can be the most difficult challenge in any business. Microsoft came to realize this early in the growth of the company. The company promise was, and always has been, to create great software that makes people’s lives easier. At the beginning, all it took to realize this dream was to present an easy-to-use graphical system with which users could interact. These days, making great software has become synonymous with making perfect software, a shift for which the company simply wasn’t prepared.

Measuring Microsoft’s fall into popular culture derision is a difficult task, but the results are unmistakable. For example, the open-source software movement had, for many years, a primary goal of destroying what they called “Micro$oft,” “Microshaft,” or “The Evil Empire.” Even now, searching on the term Micro$oft returns millions of results in Google. (Open source software is free software that isn’t created by companies but instead by thousands of volunteers. The Open Source movement is infamous for its zeal in mocking and deriding companies such as Microsoft.) As with all truly great changes, Microsoft’s response to the criticism started out small. At first, Microsoft employees began participating in newsgroups, which scared many developers, because they’d have to deal with real people. Then Microsoft began creating communities in which developers could interact with larger groups of users. Finally, Microsoft found blogs, which allowed company bloggers to ask the entire community directly what they were looking for, instead of asking a small subset of people to define the worlds’ desires. Trying to understand why people can be so negative toward your company, specifically on blogs, is a difficult thing. Jeremy Pepper, a leader in the world of public relations, chimes in with his piece “Why Negativity Happens.” Over the course of this article, we’ll examine the whys of negativity, as well as how to respond to negativity and how to ensure you’ve properly dealt with potentially damaging issues.

WHY NEGATIVITY HAPPENS

by Jeremy Pepper, blogger and president of POP! Public Relations With the ability to post anonymous comments on blogs, to set up blogs with a nom de guerre, or to pretend to be someone you are not, the inherent nature of anonymity in the blogosphere lends itself to bravado. It is human nature that when one is hiding behind the pen either via e-mail or on a blog that the truer sense of one’s self will emerge, and with the ease of posting to a blog, the chance to tear down and be negative is brought to the forefront. How does a company deal with such negative attacks, whether legitimate or not? For the legitimate attack, likely worded in a less than sincere or kind way, the company should respond. That’s just part of basic crisis communications. But what of the unwarranted attack and negativity on a blog that potentially can spread throughout the blogosphere? Should a company respond to false allegations, or is a response just going to fan the flames? In the new nature of blogs, the lack of a response unfortunately can appear to be acquiescing and confirming the complaint. And then the false allegation will spread like wildfire. Containment at the beginning is the best route to take, to quash and respond to the false rumors and negative attacks. Attacking someone or something via a blog is easy. Being that forceful in a face-to-face situation is a different thing altogether, and since it is easier to stand on a soapbox on the Internet where no one knows who you really are we will begin to see more negativity and attacks on blogs.

THE VALUE OF NEGATIVITY

As Pepper mentions, and as I’m sure you’ve realized by now, being in business sometimes means customers will be unhappy. In Canada, where I live, one of the national landmarks is Tim Horton’s, a coffee and donut store. Tim Horton’s makes coffee that regular Canadians love. To a coffee aficionado, it probably isn’t the best coffee in the world, but to most Canadians it’s soothing and reminds us of home, whatever that may be for each of us. However, even a place known for great coffee sometimes makes a bad pot, just as even the best software companies have bad releases, etc. So it should come as no surprise that sometimes customers aren’t impressed by these lapses in quality. The traditional response is something along the lines of “fix it, and make the customer happy.” Sometimes that will mean giving a poor, cold Canadian a better cup of coffee. Other times it might mean a refund. Once, at one of Toronto’s better restaurants, I reached the bottom of my bowl and found a ladybug and an ant, both dead. I was so disgusted that the manager gave our entire party their meals free of charge, and then he gave us a $50 gift certificate. Sometimes, fixing the situation and making the customer happy can cost you. But letting an unhappy customer leave unhappy will cost you even more, as they’ll tell their friends of their bad experiences, which will undoubtedly hurt your business more than a simple refund. The restaurant in question managed to turn an extremely negative experience into a generally positive one. Each negative experience your customers have is ultimately an opportunity for you to turn it into a positive one, and therefore get your customers one step closer to becoming evangelists for your company.

OTHER TYPES OF NEGATIVITY

It would be nice to think that every type of negative experiences is due to minor lapses in quality. However, that simply isn’t the case. Generally speaking, negative experiences can be grouped into four different types. Lapse in Product Quality Whether it’s bad coffee or a fresh, new shirt with a loose hem, sometimes products aren’t what they are supposed to be. Either way, most customers understand these lapses, unless, of course, they get poor service or get lost in a inefficient process when they’re looking for things to be made right.

Poor Service or Support

Most customers have experienced bad phone service, such as interminable wait times or confusing phone systems. These are the baby steps that lead to poor service. Worse is having customer service reps yell at customers, tell them they’re lying, or simply refuse to help. It happens, and these negative experiences are often enough to cancel any positive ones built up with a customer. It’s been said that it takes four positive experiences to cancel out a negative one, so ensuring that customers get the best possible support (especially when they’ve experienced a minor inconvenience, such as a lapse in product quality) is essential to your business. It’s also well-known that customers are more likely to report an unhappy experience than a happy one, and they’ll report those experiences to more people.

Lapse in Process

Lapses in process are the worst possible negative experiences a customer can have. If a customer is having her cable installed at home and needs to take half the day off to do it, and then the technician doesn’t show up, doesn’t have the right tools, or simply can’t make it happen, the customer is unlikely to be impressed. Similarly, if a customer is required to register for a new software product online, can’t do it over the phone, and the website is broken, a major lapse in process has occurred. Some lapses are minor. But some are so major that customers leave unhappy and establish a mental boycott against your company. Sadly, such lapses in process often happen to customers who have had a bad service experience or who have encountered a lapse in product quality. Abusive or Criminal Activity These types of negative experiences are rare even in the worst of businesses; however, they do happen. Mechanics overcharge for work that was never needed in the first place, a real estate agent doesn’t disclose issues with a home buyer, or a retail store sells a damaged item at full price. No matter when abuses or criminal activities happen, they are the worst type of negative experience a customer can have.