Social Media Response Plan Step 2: When to Respond

This is the second post in a series about creating your social media response plan. In the first post, "How to Create a Social Media Response Plan," we covered Step 1 - Who Will Respond?

Knowing when to respond is just as important as determining what you will say. If you see a negative post about your insurance agency, it can be tempting to jump to your own defense. Part of being prepared to respond is determining in advance which types of situations warrant a response.

Step 2: When Will You Respond?

Situations When You Should Respond

• Someone asks for your help. They may post this directly on your Facebook page, or this might be a call for help on a blog or website that isn't associated with you. Regardless of where they post it, if they mention your agency and ask for assistance, you will likely need to respond.

• Someone says something directly to you. When someone directs a post to your agency, you must respond, and quickly. This might be a mention on Twitter or a post on your Facebook wall.   

How Quickly Can You Respond?

• Designate who will respond. If you have two people trained as "first responders"(see our last blog post if you haven't completed this step yet), set up a schedule to rotate who will check the monitoring tool over the weekend and during the evenings. 

• Get weekend access to monitoring. Have notifications sent to an email address you can access during off-hours. Or, make sure your first responders have a smartphone and access to work email. 

• Set up an escalation procedure. Imagine you've received a negative comment on your Facebook page. Your first responder posts the initial response you have planned (we'll cover this in a future blog post), but the complaints continue. Your first responder needs to be able to call someone for help. They might need access to customer information to be able to contact the person directly over the weekend to get to a resolution quickly. Think through this in advance so they know who to call. 

Basically, you should respond if someone is talking to you. If they say something nice, say "thank you." If they are saying something negative, put your response plan into action. 

When Not to Respond

Not every situation will warrant a response. In some cases, a response to a negative remark may make the situation worse. It may be best not to respond when someone mentions your name but is not directing their comment to you. They might just be venting, and your response would be intrusive. 

I once came across a person who posted a status update on their own Facebook page about being frustrated with their insurance company. One of their friends asked which company they were with, and they replied with the name of the company in the comments below the post. Imagine if the company had jumped in at that point. They would essentially be barging into a conversation that these people considered to be private, among friends. That would be a situation where you could learn something perhaps, but you should not respond. Now, if they post their complaint on your page, that's a different story. 

If someone posts something negative that is directed at you, respond as quickly as possible.  Make sure your monitoring can get to you over the weekend. A Friday night post, if very damaging to your agency, can get much worse if left until Monday morning for response.

Include these guidelines in your response plan so you have a procedure to follow when you see something about your agency mentioned online. Now that you have an understanding of when you would need to respond, your next step is to plan what you would say. We'll cover Step 3: What Should You Say? in our next post.

Let us know what you've experienced - have you seen examples of someone responding to a complaint? How well was it handled? Have you had to respond to a complaint about your agency?