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Marketing & Media#WPRD2025 | Bizcommunity joins global PR community in celebrating World PR Day
9 Jul 2025





Dealing with situational negative WOM
Brands will always make mistakes - as they are run by humans. That's not the problem, as people are surprisingly forgiving, especially in South Africa where we have such a high tolerance for bad service. What makes people mad is how brands deal with the situation. Most responses are of denial, trying to ignore the claim, or making the customer feel like the fool.
A few brands actually get it right, and it is amazing the level of gratitude and advocacy that is created and takes place because of those actions. Research has proven that customers rate their level of brand satisfaction higher if they had a problem that was solved professionally and quickly compared to experiencing everything as it should be. This shows that we have an unprecedented opportunity to create advocates out of being human (and messing up).
So here is my five-point plan to make that happen:
For every situational mistake that happens, try to figure out why so that you can prevent the same from happening in the future. Remember that it is not a failure of people but rather a failure of the system - either in training, in motivating, in directing communication, in responding or in measuring. Find the fault in the system and fix it or build safety nets for alerts in a break in the system.
Mistakes do happen, but it is how we deal with them that really counts. And remember the old wise words of "treat others as you would like to be treated". This primes the right attitude that will ensure that our customers have only the best to say about us, guaranteeing positive bottom line growth for our brand. (You see - nice guys do finish first!)