Here’s the thing about your business. It can live or die dependant on the reputation it has acquired. So it is crucial for you to implement strong company reputation management.
Thanks to review sites such as Yelp and TrustPilot, and all of the social media channels currently available, your customers (and the world at large), have the capacity to rate your company. Make a wrong move, and the negative attention you receive could scupper your business for good. And then there is the media to consider. If you do anything within your business that proves newsworthy, you are looking at a public relations disaster. Great care needs to be taken with company reputation management, to ensure the only word-of-mouth garnered about your business is a positive one, and not something that will bring damage to your reputation.
To avoid those worst-case scenarios, let’s consider the reasons why a company’s reputation would be at risk. If any of the following are true to your business, you must take company reputation management steps to turn things around before it is too late.
Company reputation management: Factors to beware
Unsafe working conditions
Should an employee or a customer take legal action against you because your workplace is unsafe, you are going to face a financial hit, through the cost of hiring a legal team to protect you, as well as the downturn in profits once word about you spreads. You need to have a whs management system in place to reduce the risk of accident and injury, and you need to risk assess every area of your business. It’s your legal responsibility, as well as your duty of care to those who come into your place of business.
Unhappy employees
An unsafe working environment is one way to cause your employees to grumble. But they can be unhappy for any number of reasons. You may not be paying a fair wage. You may have an uncaring attitude towards their general wellbeing. They may not feel valued or appreciated. Their unhappiness will spread as they complain to each other about the poor treatment they are receiving, and to others outside your business doors. Therefore, care for your employees. Treat them fairly. Make employee rewards programmes the norm. Show them appreciation, and they will do the same for you with positive word of mouth about how great it is to work for you.
Poor customer service
Your customers are important to your business, but if you don’t make an effort with your customer service, then you are going to lose their custom. And if that wasn’t bad enough, your (ex) customers will also spread bad word about you to anybody who will listen. Therefore, make every effort to improve your customer service as part of your company reputation management. Ensure your staff are trained to communicate effectively with the people who use your business. Put technology in place to speed up interactions. Don’t make any promises you know you will struggle to keep. Offer customer loyalty programmes. Be good to your customers, and they will be good to you.
Keep an eye on online reviews
Before consumers decide on a product, a solution or a service provider, they research the Internet and look for the corresponding online presences: Above all, rating websites from third-party providers such as Google or TripAdvisor, and industry portals, play an important role. Keeping an eye on the reviews left there is essential for company reputation management.
The reason: now more than ever, businesses need a 360-degree view of their online presence in order to optimize their digital image. Companies have to listen to their customers, respond to feedback and ensure positive customer experiences at every single touchpoint . This is the only way to ensure that you control the perception of your brand and offer your customers the best possible customer experience. The following six measures show one way to achieve this transformation.
1. Prioritize company reputation management in the context of the customer experience
Reviews, whether positive or negative, are a valuable treasure for every company. Checking, tracking, and optimizing online reputation is beneficial to the business. However, online reputation cannot be managed in isolation from other business processes. Tight integration with other customer engagement initiatives is essential for reputation management to become a central part of your overall customer experience strategy.
Integrated customer experience and reputation management is even required here. However, the study makes it clear that most companies are only at the beginning: only 15 percent describe their approach as “advanced”, while 51 percent of those surveyed classify it as “basic” or “nonexistent”.
2. Gain the trust and loyalty of customers
While business goals and financial metrics are major drivers of online reputation optimization projects, your primary focus should be building an authentic, transparent, and trustworthy brand . More than 80 percent of consumers state that trust in a brand has a major impact on which products they buy. Customers also have a particularly high level of trust in ratings and reviews that they find on third-party rating websites. Such websites are not only the most important source of information for consumers, they also find them more reliable than the company’s customer service.
The situation is different on the part of companies. Only nine percent consider third-party review websites to be essential. When building their online reputation, they place increasing value on customer reviews (28 percent) and social media (20 percent). Pay attention to your digital image in the right places. This is how you build trust and strengthen your “social proof”.
3. Actively encourage feedback from customers
Make use of different tactics to actively use customer feedback for your branding: only 21 percent of the companies surveyed publish positive reviews, 22 percent publish the customer feedback on their company website and 28 percent use their rating stars, for example from Google. If you cultivate the listed tactics and also maintain your business listings on third-party websites, you have taken the first step in improving your brand awareness with customers and prospects.
Ideally, you can use the feedback you gain in your business decisions. Also, try out different channels to get customers to give feedback. In addition to social media, targeted addressing via email and SMS is also an effective means. 39 percent of consumers feel encouraged to provide their feedback after a follow-up email. Make sure that you have the recipient’s consent to contact him for advertising and market research purposes.
4. Answer customers’ questions and address negative feedback
Customer reviews are not a one-way street. Actively reviewing and responding to reviews is critical to company reputation management. Effective handling of questions and feedback can not only increase the profit margin, but also has a positive effect on customer satisfaction. The majority of customers expect companies to respond to their feedback, whether positive or negative. 41 percent of consumers state that their satisfaction increases significantly when companies respond to feedback. 37 percent say it makes them more likely to make a new purchase.
60 percent of respondents said that a negative review would be less of a deterrent to buying if the company responded to it. In addition, consumers on social media expect a response within a few hours, while they give companies a response time of usually 24 hours for an answer by e-mail or web form. You should therefore create guidelines for response times and also define workflows and an escalation procedure for negative reviews.
5. Allocate resources for company reputation management
In order to control and optimize customer experiences and the digital image, it is necessary to coordinate several departments and people across company levels. It is important to clearly define the responsibilities. This is the only way to make the knowledge gained from customer feedback usable for service and product developments . However, two-thirds of companies do not have a department that is responsible for company reputation management. 35 percent of them do not plan to change this either.
The causes are mostly due to a lack of time and resources. After all, 46 percent plan to ramp up their investments in customer experience and company reputation management this year. Here it is advisable to establish a baseline for your success measurement and to examine the direct connection between positive reviews and customer acquisition and retention. In this way, you can be sure of receiving support from your entire company and that the allocation of resources is as smooth as possible.
6. Invest in technology for a 360-degree view of your customers
When you use a software solution to monitor reviews and optimize your customer feedback in company reputation management, you eliminate tedious manual processes. With the help of a robust, effective system, you can gain valuable insights into your online reputation and customer experiences, discover areas for improvement and ultimately ensure positive business development. However, very few companies take such a holistic approach. For example, 57 percent of companies don’t use dedicated software to manage customer inquiries and complaints submitted through third-party review websites.
Around 33 percent of companies use internally developed tools. This not only makes it more difficult for all of the company departments and locations to share data, it also does not provide a uniform data source. Only if a “single source of truth” collects and consolidates data from all customer contact points is it possible to gain reliable knowledge from the abundance of inconsistent feedback data. This integration is the key to a 360-degree view of the customer perception of a brand.
Other factors
There are other issues that are bound to scupper your reputation. Data breaches are a big thing at the moment, so ensure you secure your computer networks. Remind yourself of the environment, and put eco-friendly practices in place. Don’t break the law, in any way, as that will damage both your personal and business reputation. And there are bound to be other factors, so use your head and consider anything for company reputation management that may be specific to you and your business.
Conclusion
So, is your company’s reputation at risk? Consider what we have said, and if anything relates to your business, take the company reputation management steps to put things right before trouble strikes.
