To deliver a great customer experience means that you exceeded the customer’s expectations in one or more obvious ways – you over-delivered on something that your customers didn’t see coming.

Think your business delivers exceptional customer service? You’re not alone — 80% of businesses believe that they do so.

But what would your customers say? Chances are, they disagree — only 8% of customers think they received an exceptional customer service experience. That leaves a lot of unsatisfied, or even worse — angry — customers. Sometimes, when you’re lucky, those angry customers decide to complain.

Wait, you’re lucky if a customer complains? That was the premise of New York Times bestselling author Jay Baer’s Connections keynote, titled “Hug Your Haters.” As it stands, one-third of all customer complaints go completely unanswered — but, according to Baer, ignoring is the worst possible thing you can do. No reply actually is a reply — it says, “We don’t care about you at all."

Check out Baer's interview with our own Marketing Cloudcast podcast!

Haters aren’t your problem, according to Baer. Ignoring them is — and he took the opportunity at Connections to preach his philosophy of using negative customer feedback as an opportunity by responding to every complaint, on every channel, every time. Not only does hugging your haters make you more money, it also makes you a better company.

But first let’s take a look at the money. Here are a couple statistics Baer shared:

• Resolving a customer’s problem saves that customer 70% of the time

• Considering what we already know about retaining customers being much cheaper long-term than trying to find new customers, a 5% increase in customer retention can increase your profits by 25-85%

But currently, how businesses spend their money doesn’t reflect what we already know. Rather than investing in keeping existing customers happy, companies focus on getting new ones. For every $500 billion marketing dollars spent, only $9 billion is spent in customer service.

The customers that reach out to your business to make a complaint are just the very tip of the iceberg — only 5% of unhappy customers ever complain in a way that a business can find that information (and, therefore, use it to become better!). That means 95% of unhappy customers are the type that are dissatisfied, and then just completely disappear without providing any feedback. That small portion that does take the opportunity to complain — to tell your business how you can do better — are the canaries in the coal mine. But they are treated like the least important customers — we should treat them like our most important.

But not all “haters” behave equally — Baer describes two different types of haters: the onstage haters and the offstage haters.

Offstage haters: Complain in private, typically older, less tech and social media-savvy. Nine out of 10 offstage haters expect a reply to their complaint.

Onstage haters: Typically younger than offstage haters. Complain in public, like on review sites or social media. What are they looking for? An audience — only 47% of onstage haters expect a reply to their complaint from the company.

Currently, Baer explains the landscape as 38% of haters being onstage, and 62% of being offstage. But that’s changing very quickly — not only is it faster to be an onstage hater, demographics are also shifting as younger millennials become more consumers. In short: If you rely on a call center, you’re going to be in trouble.

So how does your company adjust to prepare for the rise of the onstage hater? Baer has 4 tips to remember:

1. Be fast everywhere

40% of social media complainers expect a reply within one hour — and they’re don’t care about what time of day or whether or not the complaint falls within “business hours.”

2. Obey the rule of two replies

If you’re on a public forum responding to a customer, never reply more than twice. If an angry customer reaches out, you respond, they’re still mad, you respond once more (and try to take the conversation offline), and they’re still mad, it’s time to quit. Otherwise, you’ll get sucked into a tit-for-tat vortex. At that point you must accept that the customer just wants to complain in front of an audience – but they don’t want a resolution.

3. Customer service is the new marketing.

That’s why you need to answer every complaint, every channel, every time. Customer service is now a spectator sport – there’s no half-life on a Yelp review; there’s no expectation on a forum discussion.

4. Stop blaming the customer...and hug your haters.