This is a guest post by Dan McCarthy, Event Manager at JD Parties, an event management company based in the UK. Dan has five years of event project management under his belt. He has worked on many successful events, and currently he shares his knowledge by writing on the company blog. Follow him on Twitter @DanCarthy2.

If you own a company of any kind, then customer satisfaction is a part of the business. This is the case even for B2B companies. Of course, there’s no such thing as 100% customer satisfaction, and there’s always going to be that one client who feels the need to make his grievances known.

That’s why you need to be prepared for negative feedback both during and after your event because more than likely there will be a small handful of dissatisfied attendees.

However, your response to these unhappy campers makes all the difference and ultimately influences how your customers as a whole will perceive your brand.

1. Include a Post-Event Survey

Here’s the thing about unhappy customers: they have a complaint that they want to get off their chest.

A post-event survey is a way for them to air their grievance in a constructive manner. This also reduces the likelihood of a complaint from being aired on social media, which customers are more likely to use if they feel their feedback is falling on deaf ears (or don’t know how else to make it).

A post-event survey should include the usual “scale of 1 to 10” questions. There should also be a section where customers can leave specific comments regarding anything that wasn’t addressed in the questions.

Once you analyse the data and notice a common trend, you can now address the issue directly back to those who offered the feedback.

For instance, perhaps many respondents indicated that the venue did not have enough restrooms and that there was a frustratingly long line to use the loo. You can send out a personal note to all those negatively effective by it, explaining that you’ve heard them and will make the appropriate changes so that it won’t happen again next year. Something like this:

First off, we would like to thank you again for choosing to attended our event. We analysed the feedback and upon review, realised that access to restrooms were insufficient. We apologise for the inconvenience this may have caused for you – and all of our guests – and will act upon this information when choosing a venue for our next event.

By addressing the issue, it creates a sense of transparency and lets the people who made the complaints know that an action is being taken in response to their grievance.

Keep in mind that surveys can also be implemented offline. This can be done via traditional mail with a pre-paid envelope included. You can also add a comment box close to the venue’s entrance during the event.

2. Responding to Negative Feedback via Social Media

Even with post-event surveys, some people will nevertheless air their complaint on social media. What you shouldn’t do is delete a negative comment or blacklist the person. This is just burying the issue, and it doesn’t really show you care about addressing it.

When responding to a negative comment, let the person know that you will be more than happy to speak with him/her on a private basis, so end the message with your company email or phone number.

The best result it to take the issue offline so you can deal with it properly with all the information at hand.

If the person does take up on your offer and contacts you privately, do the following:

Understand

Always aim to understand what the real grievance is, and then you can be more sympathetic to their point of view. Often, people just want to be listened to and feel a connection with your brand. In fact many genuine complaints are from people who care enough about your event to take the time to offer feedback. They’re actually fans of yours who want you to do better!

Once you’ve got to the root of the issue, you can then proceed with a solution if the complaint is legitimate. If you feel that it is something you can’t address, or in fact you did the right thing in the first place, you’ll need to spend some time explaining your point of view. If the complainant really believes you listening to them, they’ll most often extend the courtesy back to you.

Stay Calm

Even if the complainant is the absolute archetype of a difficult customer, you need to stay calm and resist the urge to respond in kind. Just hear the person out and then respond in a courteous manner.

Defend your company and staff if appropriate, but be careful to do so without coming off as combative. If the issue is being handled in person, be careful about your body language. In other words, don’t cross your arms or put your hands on your hips.

Follow up With Supportive Questions

Good: Is there anything else I can help you with?

Not so good: Is there any other problem I can help you with?

What’s the difference between the two questions? The second makes the customer dwell on further issues that may have been relatively minor. People have a natural tendency to blow things out of proportion, and if you ask if there’s any other problem, things that were a non-issue are going to be presented as a problem. All of a sudden, you have a whole other complaint that now has to be remedied.

3. Handling a Persistent Complainer

Sometimes, you’ll come across nagging customers that just want everyone on social media to hear their problems. These are the trolls that continue to post negative comments even after you offered to handle the problem on a one-on-one basis. Once again, don’t block the person unless they use overtly offensive/foul language directed at your staff or other commenters on the site.

Most trolls are aggrieved customers or attendees who are bent on playing the role of victim. Respond to these people the same way you would when addressing a complaint behind closed doors. That is, remain courteous, stay calm, and ask supportive questions.

Sometimes, you also find that other members will chime in and back you up by reflecting on their own positive experiences too.

What you shouldn’t do is get into a protracted online battle. Your responses should remain rational and level-headed, and aim to take the issue offline.

Here are a few real-world examples of how big-name companies responded to such customer complaints:

There will also come a point where it makes no sense to continue the conversation if the aggrieved party won’t agree to contact you via a channel that will allow you to resolve the issue properly. At this point you will have to accept that you can’t win them all.

4. Tracking Complaints

If your company is well established, then it also likely has a large social media following. As such, you may not be able to keep tabs on every single comment as they are posted in real time. This is why you should take advantage of social network tools to make comment tracking manageable. These nifty tools make it easy to track comments and ensure a negative feedback doesn’t slip under your radar.

Google Alerts – Rather than consistently refreshing your page, leave it to Google alerts to send you an email or push notification when comments with specific keywords are posted.

Brandwatch – Some tweets are worthy of your attention, others less so. Brandwatch comes with filtering tools so you are only notified when tweets containing your specific keywords or hashtags are used.

Trackur – If you have a company profile across multiple social network platforms, then use Trackur for detecting trending topics and comments. Both free and paid premium plans are available.

Mention – Here’s another handy resource for managing your social media comments in real-time. The system also allows you to respond through the application as opposed to opening a new window on your browser to sign in on your social network.

5. Don’t Turn a Blind Eye to Negative Comments

Negative comments can be minimised but can’t be avoided completely. It’s how you respond that counts. Be willing to engage with your clients even if they’re hell bent on pointing out everything that’s wrong with your company and you could find that bad turning around the situation, you end up with a super fan instead of a detractor.