Take advice from the Entrepreneur.com article “5 Tips for Using Social Media as a Customer Service Tool” to help you address customer complaints and turn dissenters into advocates. These days, most people prefer to get their news and other information online, and the same goes for customer service. Responding to negative comments or customer service issues online is a great opportunity to show how much you care. Here are five tips to help you turn a problem into an opportunity:

1. When using Twitter, create a secondary account specifically for customer service. Use your main account to reply to customer tweets to let them know that you’re aware of the issue and that your customer service account (i.e. @AcmeCustomerService) will be contacting them. Then use the customer service account to follow the customer, engage with them and solve the issue. After an initial reply to show the public that you’re helping, it’s often best to use direct messages for the privacy of the customer.
2. Reply quickly. The faster you respond to complaints, the more you’ll impress. It’s best to respond to comments and complaints within five minutes.
3. Let the customer know who they are engaging with. Humanize the experience by adding a name to your responses. For example, “We are very sorry to hear about your experience. We will do whatever we can to help you. – Scott L.”
4. Reply in a friendly and helpful manner. Remember that social media is a pubic forum and people other than the person you are responding to will see your replies. It’s an opportunity to save a customer and impress other current or potential customers at the same time, so be as accommodating as possible!
5. Create a system of checks and balances. Keep track of all interactions and review the results. Did you do everything possible to help?

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