How Not to Respond When a Blogger Criticizes Your Customer Service

When blogger Damien Mulley had a problem with Sky Handling Partners’ customer service, he did what any blogger would do: he blogged about it.

That’s when he started getting confirmation e-mails from gay dating sites. One of the e-mails revealed an IP address that Mulley was easily able to trace back to Sky Handling Partners.

After some less than fruitful conversations with the folks at Sky Handling Partners, Mulley posted again about his issues, only to receive an e-mail from a law firm telling him to take down the posts.

If Sky Handling Partners had simply responded to the first blog post by apologizing for the original customer service issue and trying to make it up to Mulley, they wouldn’t have two more critical blog posts on their hands. Now, by resorting to legal action, they only stand to make the situation more difficult for themselves.

When a blogger criticizes your company, the best thing you can do is try to smooth the situation over. Making it worse with underhanded, immature tactics and then resorting to shaky legal threats turns a little bush fire into a massive conflagration.

We’ll cover blogger engagement success stories, as well as some bad examples at the next Blog Business Summit.

Many thanks to Maryam Scoble for the heads up on this developing story.