What should you do if someone with 11,000 followers, who isn’t even a customer, complains loudly about you on Twitter?
You’ve probably got three options:
1. Ignore them and hope they will go away and no-one was reading Twitter at the time.
2. Give them a courteous “sorry” online and hope that’s the end of it.
3. Send them some flowers and apologise sincerely.
4. Invite them onto your podcast to talk about it.
The last option is the one that the folks from Liveplan chose when I complained about their YouTube ads recently. Check out their interview with me here. It’s a pretty smart way of dealing with the issue. I felt heard, and they turned me into a fan of the business, even if I don’t use their software. I think it’s a mature way of dealing with criticism and it demonstrates a company culture that is willing to listen and learn – even if they disagreed with me that they should pull back the frequency of their ads.