How To Create an Internet Troll

As a Marketing and Social Media consultancy, our first advice before anyone tackles any new strategy, is to always ensure your business practices make your clients happy. If you give reasons for your customer to be disgruntled, there is not much that a top publicist or community manager can do to contain bad word of mouth. It is important to remember that for every 1 person that will recommend you there are 5 others that will condemn you if they are given a reason to do so.

Many of the people we work with are terrified of the freedom of speech available through the Internet. They mostly fear what we call in the Social Media Industry, as "Trolls". In a business context, this word is used to describe angered customers that unleash their fury on the internet. They mainly come in 3 types:

1) Competitors (publicly or in-cognito) dragging your name through the mud for their own benefit

2) Bad-tempered, irrational people using any excuse to excite or express anger

3) Victims of extremely poor customer services / sales / marketing

There is very little that can be done for cases 1 and 2, as their negative outbursts are not rational and can often be ignored (or contained to some extent). However the main reason for "trolling' businesses on the internet comes from the 3rd scenario. In this case, it is not the Troll itself that is the problem, but the circumstances that lead to their animosity. The good news is that things can be turned around at any point but will require humility.

Let's face it, we all make mistakes. The important thing is how you deal with them to avoid the situation from escalating. Unfortunately, some businesses take on a not-so-ethical approach to their marketing, sales and customer services for the sole purposes of making a quick buck. Schemes like these may give you a rapid sale but have a long-term damaging effect, especially when enough people notice and decide to unleash their anger on the internet.

We would like to use a recent example that we were personally subjected to, to illustrate a recipe for Trolling disaster. Our experience at the Orlando Sheraton Vistana Resort was enough to make even good-natured visitors foam at the mouth with rage. Our hope, by sharing this story, is that we can help many businesses avoid the negative turmoil of publicity that can follow up incidents like these and educate consumers to be aware of similar scams and unethical practices.

Case Study: The Sheraton-Starwood Time Share Scam

1) Over-promise with a mouth-watering pitch. The best way to ensure you create a Troll is to really set the scene with an irresistible offer in an inspiring location. Preferably approach your prey when they are on holiday enjoying a day trip to an amusement park such as Orlando Universal Studios. Firstly, use a good hook such as 75% Discount on Blue Man Group tickets. The condition: use something equally as mouth-watering and inviting. "In order for you to receive this discount, you are required to attend an invitation to an unlimited breakfast buffet at the Sheraton Vistana Resort, followed by a quick tour. This way, you will consider our hotel on your next visit to Orlando. If you do not attend, you will be charged for the show ticket discounts". Breakfast buffet in a lovely hotel as an incentive? Sounds like an excellent marketing plan and definitely would make you want to consider staying at the resort in future. So ask your victim to sign an invitation that gets you to sign the terms and conditions and books them in for a breakfast feast.

2) Get them lost by giving no indication or signs of where they need to go. Ensure that you make it as difficult as possible for your guests to find you. When they call to confirm their breakfast booking in the morning, give them the most vague location possible (such as the number to the entry to your campus). This way they can spend 45minutes looking for the breakfast buffet all over your campus with no-one able to help. This will really build up their hunger levels and set the scene for when you strike.

3) Bring a whole new level to the meaning of "Under Deliver". Once your victims have found the correct location, shock them into the reality that they have been fully scammed. For example, get a salesman to greet your starving guests and drop the bombshell: their 'breakfast session' is actually a 90min aggressive sales pitch for time-share sales. As far as the 'breakfast buffet' goes - that does not exist, unless you count a coffee machine and a stale donut in an empty basket.

4) Read your script and ignore any real situation or human needs. When your good-natured customer starts to turn a shade of green and expresses that this was not what you signed up for, let them know that they are held ransom and that their card will be charged $120.00 for the ticket discounts unless they sit through the 90min presentation. When they try to reason with you, do everything you can to ignore the situation and go by your script. This usually works best when you place people in management roles that are incapable of making judgement decisions. If for example, they voice that ambushing them into a 90min investment sales-pitch when they are starving and angry cannot produce a positive result - stick to your guns until they turn a deep-forest green colour and start foaming at the mouth.

5) Top it off by being rude and passive-aggressive. When the situation escalates and your incandescent (preferably starving) customer ask to speak to senior management, ensure that the employee in this position is as rude and indifferent as possible. If they offer a reasonable solution (i.e. they will go for breakfast elsewhere as long as you let them go) make sure you drain last drop of patience they may have had by insisting that if they leave they will be charged $120.00. As a last resort, when your victim has truly transformed into a green goblin of fury and gives you a final chance to choose between $120.00 or a public trolling campaign against their actions, ensure that you respond with the most passive-agressive tone you can muster with a comment such as "please go right ahead ma'am".

Congratulations! You have now created a troll!

Despite the level of negative publicity that this will cause you, there are still ways that the situation can be recovered. As I mentioned in the introduction of this article, any Type 3 Troll can be calmed and the damage contained in 3 simple steps:

1) Offer a public apology from higher management stating that the company will deal with unethical practices

2) Request a personal written apology from the manager that have caused the grief to be sent to the customer

3) Offer compensation and a generous gift to appease your customer's anger

We hope that our misfortunes have helped to ensure that you never create an Internet Troll, and that if you happen to have the misfortune to do so by error, there are ways in which you can contain the situation and make amends.

We also encourage anyone who has fallen victim of any sales or marketing scams, poor trading standards and embarrassing customer services to voice your opinion. Your opinion as a consumer matters and it is only by voicing your experience loudly and publicly that the marketplace as a whole can become safer and more ethical for everyone.

To end on a positive note, it is great to see that some people do a wonderful job when dealing with clients - even when they have done nothing wrong. One of our favourite examples of great customer services is the Hilton Giraffe story, which should be a story which we hope in the future will set the example rather than the exemption.

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