Reflection on Social Media Case 5: PayPal Deleted Comments

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To delete, or not to delete, that is the question. For PayPal, they chose to delete to try to save face… But it did the opposite. The company was featured on Forbes and as any company would, PayPal wanted to brag about their reviews. They posted the Forbes article on their Facebook page with pure intentions but what happened was something I am sure that they never expected. People became very upset and began voicing their concerns and complaints about the company and their values. The platform of Facebook was the perfect forum for customers to voice their complaints, but also offered the company who put out the post the freedom to ask themselves to ask the question… To delete, or not to delete? To save face they began deleting comments that they did not agree with, or were not going to be helpful to business… this made people even more angry, posting more negative comments. The exact opposite of what PayPal had intended. This post to boost company moral had gone bad, and wasn’t going to get much better.

What could PayPal have done to prevent or subsidize what happened with this post? What happened on Facebook with PayPal and their customers was something I’m sure worries many businesses. It is a general rule, that when negative things are being commented, that they should be dealt with in a calm manner. By deleting comments, PayPal ended up making their customers angrier than they were before. It can also lead to a mistrust in the brand or product because the customer might feel that the company is being dishonest about what they are offering. There are 5 ways tobest avoid this negativity: Thanking the customer for voicing their concerns, acknowledge the time that they put into their response, apologize, explain details of what occurred, and help them to know that you will do what you can to help them be happy with the product again. By doing this, companies can avoid a situation like the one with PayPal.

Comments

  1. Erin SwearingenFebruary 21, 2018 at 3:09 PM

    Great outlook on this Keslie! I really like how you gave 5 tips on how to avoid negativity. I think that is great information for anyone and everyone to have, especially if they have social media accounts, because keeping those in check can be a pain in the bum sometimes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. karleejoFebruary 22, 2018 at 9:38 AM

    I liked how you offered alternative options for what they could have done instead of just deleting everything. I agree, I think companies should deal with these kinds of things calmly, and not frantically trying to erase their problems.

    ReplyDelete

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