Comments You Should Not Reply To

The default is to reply

Answering comments is generally right: it is visible, it demonstrates that somebody is there, and it converts a passing reader into a conversation.

Most advice stops there, which leaves businesses replying to everything including the things that get worse when answered.

A comment nobody would have noticed becomes prominent the moment the business responds, because a reply pushes the thread up and signals that it mattered.

So the useful skill is not how to reply. It is recognising the small number of cases where not replying is the better move.

What to leave alone

• An argument already running between other people.
• Bait, written to provoke a response.
• A competitor commenting on your post.
• A complaint you have already answered privately.
• Anything about politics under an unrelated post.
• A comment you would answer while angry.

The first is the most common. Two customers disagreeing in your comments will usually resolve or fade, and a business joining in makes itself a participant in something it can only lose.

The test

One question, and it settles most cases.

Is there a person here who wants an answer.

A genuine question, a real complaint, or somebody asking for a price all have a person wanting something, and those get replies.

Bait, sarcasm, and general grievance have no answerable question, and a reply supplies one where none existed.

Where you are unsure, ask what a reasonable reader would think if they saw the comment with no reply. Usually nothing, which is the answer.

Answer once, then stop

The discipline for the cases where you do reply and it does not resolve.

Reply once, properly, addressing the substance and offering to continue privately.

If the response is another argument, do not reply again.

A single unanswered reply from a business, sitting under a hostile follow-up, reads as composure. A three-exchange argument reads as a business that argues with customers.

Readers are not scoring the exchange. They are forming an impression, and the impression from a long thread is bad regardless of who was right.

Stopping is not conceding, and the temptation to have the last word is exactly what makes the thread longer.

A worked example

A business received a comment implying their prices were excessive, from somebody who had never been a customer.

They replied explaining their pricing, which prompted a longer reply, which prompted a detailed rebuttal.

The thread ran to eleven comments and was the most visible thing on their page for a fortnight.

Nobody else joined in, and the business appeared in every exchange defending itself.

A later similar comment was left alone. It received two responses from other customers disagreeing with it and then disappeared from view within a day.

The difference in outcome came entirely from whether the business had participated.

Hiding is better than deleting

The middle option, which most people do not know exists.

Most platforms allow a comment to be hidden, which removes it from public view while leaving it visible to the person who wrote it.

That avoids the escalation that deletion produces, since somebody who sees their comment removed frequently posts it again more loudly, or screenshots it.

Hiding suits spam, abuse, and anything that breaks your own stated rules.

It does not suit a genuine complaint, which should be answered rather than concealed, since hidden complaints are the thing that produces a much worse problem later.

Reserve deletion for anything abusive or unlawful, and hide the rest.

Let customers answer

An option that is stronger than replying and requires patience.

A satisfied customer defending you in your own comments is far more persuasive than anything you could write.

That happens more often than businesses expect, and it happens only if you leave a gap for it.

A business that replies within four minutes to every comment never finds out, because the space closes before anybody else arrives.

Waiting a few hours before responding to anything contentious costs nothing and occasionally means you do not need to respond at all.

Decide in advance

Because these judgements are hardest in the moment they arise.

Write two or three lines for yourself: what you always answer, what you never answer, and what waits until tomorrow.

Add that anything involving a named individual, a legal matter, or another business gets no immediate reply.

Where more than one person can post as the business, they need the same lines, since an inconsistent voice is worse than a slow one.

Having decided while calm is the entire mechanism, since the comments that cause damage are the ones answered quickly and warmly by somebody annoyed.

Move it private, properly

The step between replying and leaving it alone, and the wording matters more than people expect.

Offering to continue privately is right for anything specific to one customer, and it should be an offer with a route attached rather than a redirection.

Please send us a message and we will sort it out today gives somebody somewhere to go. Please contact us reads as a way of ending the public exchange.

Answer the substance briefly in public first, so anybody reading later can see it was addressed rather than deflected, then offer the private route.

And make sure the private route is actually monitored, since an unanswered message after a public offer to help is considerably worse than not having offered.

The counter-case

Silence has costs too.

A page where nobody ever replies looks unattended, and a genuine question left unanswered in public suggests the business does not answer questions.

Complaints in particular should be answered, visibly and quickly, because an unanswered complaint is read by everybody who arrives afterwards as an admission.

There is also a version of this advice used to avoid difficult conversations entirely, which is not restraint but avoidance.

Answer questions and complaints properly. Leave arguments, bait, and anything you would write while annoyed.

The rules

1. Ask whether somebody wants an answer.
2. Answer questions and complaints, always.
3. Leave arguments between other people.
4. Reply once, then stop.
5. Wait a few hours on anything contentious.
6. Hide rather than delete.
7. Write your rules down while calm.

Step four is the one that prevents the visible damage, since a business that stops after one reply reads as composed and one that continues reads as argumentative.

How to answer the ones that deserve it is covered in answering a complaint in public.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.