ο»ΏBusiness Fire Drills | Season 1, Episode 23 | Fire Drill 22: Before a Client Complaint Goes Public
It's 11 o'clock on a Tuesday night. You're about to turn off the lights and you see a notification. A client you thought was happy just tagged your business in a post. "Paid thousands, got ignored, do not hire." Everyone you know can see it, and you are the last one to find out.
That's a Business Fire Drill, my friend. I'm attorney Tamsen Horton, and I have been putting out business fires since 2011. Today's fire drill is Fire Drill 22: Before a Client Complaint Goes Public.
Here's the surprise. Most people who post a public complaint are not trying to ruin you. They're people who felt like there was no other way to be heard. So the fix isn't a clever comeback. It's making sure they have somewhere else to go before they ever open that app.
Quick question. You wouldn't dream of living in a house without a smoke detector. So why are you living in your business without one? Let me ask you this very important question. Where is the smoke detector in your business? You live there. You occupy the space. It's supporting you financially. And you probably don't have one, because nobody told you that you needed one. So I built one for you. Eleven questions, about three minutes, and it will show you exactly which fires your business is most likely to have. The link is in the show notes. Please go turn it on.
So let's say you run the smoke detector and it goes off. That's your fire alarm. Here's what that alarm looks like, sounds like, and acts like. It's a one-star review with your name on it. It's a Facebook post tagging your business. It's a long comment thread under your own post, and people are piling on by the minute. Sometimes it comes after the client already tried to reach you privately and nobody answered.
You've heard the alarm, so now what? Are you reacting, or are you responding? Reacting is firing back in public, defending yourself line by line, or deleting the post at midnight and hoping it disappears. All of those are usually going to make it look a whole lot worse.
Responding is running the drill. And the drill is the same every single time: D-R-I-L-L. Running it is how you build your fire extinguisher, because you do not go to the store when your house is on fire to buy one. You get it ahead of time. It's on the wall. You just reach out and get it when you need to use it.
D, don't react. Don't answer tonight. Don't delete it. Don't argue. Don't ask your friends to go leave good reviews. Extinguisher piece number one: a standing rule, decided now while you're calm. We don't argue in public, and we don't delete unless it truly breaks the platform's rules. And whoever watches your social accounts, if it's someone besides you, they know they're allowed to move things private immediately.
R, record everything. Screenshot the post, the comments, and the timestamps before anything changes. Piece number two of your fire extinguisher: a folder for it, with the date and what you did. Digital is fine. I use Notion as my own digital infrastructure. But for anything that can bring down your life, your finances, or your business (and in this case I'm also going to bring in your reputation in a big way), print a copy. Because if you get locked out of your email, or locked out of your digital password manager, you just don't want to lose everything. And those are extreme circumstances. It would need to be extreme for me to print something out, or to have a client print something out, on these facts and circumstances.
I, identify the real risk. Is the complaint accurate, unfair, or a misunderstanding? Whichever it is, your public tone stays calm. That's extinguisher piece number three: you're going to sort it into those buckets. If it's accurate, you fix it and you say so. If it's a misunderstanding, you clarify privately. And if it's false and could really damage your business, that's when you get an attorney's eyes on it before you say another word.
Now, you've heard me talk about this before. I love my dog. When I got our first dog, the breeder told me, learn to bathe your own dog, don't just book the groomer. The same idea applies here. You can hire help, but you need to know how to handle this type of situation yourself so that you can tell when your help is actually helping. Just like with my dog: if she rolls in something disgusting, or she gets sick, and I call the groomer and they say, "Yeah, we can get you in in about four days," I don't want a really dirty dog with disgusting stuff on her for four days. So you have to know how to handle this yourself, even when you have access to professionals who can help you.
L, lead with calm. Extinguisher piece number four: a short reply you can use immediately. Three sentences. "I'm sorry this was your experience. I want to make this right. Please email me at this address so I can look into it." That's it. Don't share their details. Don't explain your side. Don't mention what they paid, or didn't pay, or did or didn't do. Keeping their information private is your job, even when they don't.
Bonus tip for you here. Make up a set of pre-written TextExpander snippets. TextExpander is one of my favorite Team Tech employees. It's like shortcuts on steroids. Whatever the reply is, it was crafted when you were calm. So you can bang out that snippet on your keyboard in the emotion of it, and what comes out is a very calm, professional reply that you do want the public to see.
L, lock in the lesson. This is fire extinguisher piece number five: a private complaint channel that works. An email address or a form, and someone is checking it consistently. And the client sees it where they'd actually look: in their onboarding, on your receipts, in your purchase terms. If a frustrated client can't find you in less than 30 seconds, they're tempted to go public. But if they can find you in less than 30 seconds, they don't tend to go public.
I created this for myself, and you're welcome to use the idea. I'll link it in the show notes. It's my feedback page. I had wrangled with this for years, mainly for testimonials and good feedback. But I had pieces here and pieces there and they were all over the place. Thankfully, with Claude, I said, hey, can we turn this into a one-stop repository, so people can say, "I want to give feedback about a YouTube video, or a podcast episode, or my experience as a paid customer on a call"? I was tired of having it everywhere. Because when I look at it from the perspective of my clients and customers, it's like, where do you want me to go? Especially your great customers who know you across a wide variety of things. They might have ten options. That's really frustrating.
So I created tamsenhorton.com/feedback, and that's what I use now. It lives at the bottom of every email. I put it in anything that's behind my paywall. I put it in the onboarding. I just put it everywhere. If that's helpful for you in any way, it has really streamlined my end of it. It's easier on me, and I know it's much easier on my clients.
This actually ties into the episode we just did on testimonial releases. On the form, there's a link to my testimonial release right on there. I am not consistent about asking for testimonials. I'm not. And people were like, "Where can we give you feedback?" And I said, "Oh, let me build it." I say that because you can tackle a few different pieces all at once. Just like a few different things can be on fire at the same time, a few different things can be part of a celebration at the same time.
Now, if this situation is already on fire for you, I want you to take screenshots. Again, we're not doing anything publicly. Reply briefly and calmly. Tell them they can message you privately. Follow through on anything that you promised. And don't delete it unless it genuinely breaks the platform's rules.
Now you have your next right decision.
Option one: do nothing. If you have a private complaint channel that exists, and someone consistently checks it, you're good to go. This is my feedback loop. Whether it's positive, middle ground, or negative, whatever it is, I have one area to check, because I don't know about you, but I don't want to manage ten different places to go. No, thank you. If you have that in place, you are good to go.
Option two: take the time to put this drill in place. Can an unhappy client, or a happy client, find where to tell you what they're going through in less than 30 seconds? If they can't, I would put this drill in place as soon as possible.
Option three: send this episode to a friend, because they are one frustrated client away from finding out if their own feedback channel works.
Now, this was the short version on this fire. If you would like me to go deeper on any part of this (the exact words for replies, what I keep as my predetermined set of replies in TextExpander, what to do when the complaint is false, or even how I set up my feedback loop), leave me a comment and tell me what would be interesting to you. I will gladly do an in-depth episode.
Next up is Fire Drill 23: Before Reviews Start Hurting the Brand. Because business moments like this are predictable, your panic is optional, and we are absolutely going to run these fire drills before the fire alarm goes off.
