Social media is part of your everyday life. You cannot escape it. But did you know customers can talk about you on social media? Good or bad, it can affect your business?

How you treat customers in real life can spill over to social media. Chances are you may not even know that your customers are talking about you behind your back.

According to Social Media Today, 81 percent of people admitted that recommendations and posts from family and friends on social media directly impacted on their buying decisions.  

Is your customer service phenomenal? After purchasing your product or service, are your customers happy? Or do your employees just not care and treat your customers like they don’t matter? Either way, customers like to express themselves on social media and often times they do this behind your back. They don’t post to your social media channels, instead, they post about you online and what they are writing is read by their friends. They are influencing their friends’ behaviour and you don’t even know it’s happening.

How customers are talking about you behind your back 

Here is an example of someone praising a business for their awesome customer service. I visited Victoria Secret for the very first time and my experience was amazing.

I posted it online to let my friends know when they are looking for lingerie, they too, can have the same great experience. Even though I was praising Victoria Secret, I never tagged them and I didn’t write it on their social media. I just kept it between me and my friends.

44 people liked this post and there were 12 comments. Don’t forget when you like or comment on Facebook, your friends can see that activity. What does that mean to you?

If 44 people liked the post and each had 250 friends on Facebook, this one post had the potential to reach 11,000 people. And we are not even counting how many friends of mine read that post but didn’t like it or make a comment. One little post can reach many people.

Victoria Secret has no idea what I wrote. They didn’t provide fantastic customer service to be mentioned on social media, they did it because that’s how they treat everyone!

Bad Customer Service Can Have Negative Results On Social Media

“Emily” decided to tell her friends on Facebook about her horrible experience with Petro-Canada. 

Like me, she didn’t tag Petro-Canada, so they are not aware what happened. They have no idea that so many people are talking about them behind their back. Emily posted her story and it was liked by 23 people AND shared by 297 people with 31 comments. Wow! Talk about the power of influence!

Of the 297 people who shared this post, if they only had 250 friends each, can you imagine the reach this one post got? It had the potential to be read by 74,250 people. We still haven’t calculated the reach this received by the number of people who liked the post and made comments too.

I do not know Emily, but I was one of the 74,250 who potentially read this post. I cannot remember how I noticed it, but what it’s important is that I remember the story and the next time I need to put gas in my car, I may think twice before stopping at Petro-Canada.

Social Media is the Power of Influence!

Both of these examples demonstrate the importance of customer service. Before if you treated your customers badly, not too much happened. That customer would have told one person at a time and their friends would have told their friends one person at a time. The influence of reaching out to their friends was less. They may have told 4-6 people if that.

It’s 2016 and how you treat your customers matter. You don’t want them talking negatively behind your back. If they do talk about you, you want them to tell everyone how wonderful your business is and why their friends need to purchase from you.

Good or bad, have you ever mentioned on social media the way a business treated you?