For those that are active on social media, when you receive a complaint via the social media platform do you treat it as you would any other complaint and if so do you respond privately with a letter(if your customer and you have the address) or do you acknowledge and respond on the thread?
Additionally, for those that are not active but run scans for your name and find complaints how do you address them?

We treat is as any other complaint and it goes through our complaint team. We never respond on the thread, it is taken offline.

I get an immediate notification if there is a comment on our social media. I do reply with a generic statement: "I sincerely apologize you are having an issue and I will have that department head contact you immediately." 99% of the time, the person responds with a thank you. Sometimes they remove the original comment. And sometimes they reply back to the comment thanking us for the great job we did resolving their issues. I try to take criticisms as an opportunity. I am not saying I have never deleted a comment. If it is a rant with bad language from someone being foreclosed on, I have deleted that type of comment and actually blocked them from our page. We do log the complaints, as with any complaint.

I agree with Christy, you want to address the comment but keep it generic and take "the discussion" offline.