No matter how big a business is in the industry where you belong, not seeing negative feedback from the public is almost impossible. Nonetheless, getting negative comments is okay because you will still be getting loads of positive feedback for sure. The question is this, how will you know the public’s insights towards your business if you do not have any form of social media reputation management?
We cannot emphasize just quite enough how critical reviews are when running a business. This is the primary reason why you will need reputation management. Having such will provide you access to a medium that can improve your name or standing in the market and further strengthen your brand.
If executed accordingly, reputation management will further re-establish the credibility of your brand to your customers. To help you know more about reputation management, we have broken down what it is and why it is essential, alongside some SOP’s you should remember.
What It Is
Reputation management generally pertains to influencing or controlling in one way or another, the organization’s reputation. Alongside the growth of social media and the Internet, search results play an integral role in an organization’s reputation. Online reputation management focuses on the management of products and services within the digital space.
On the other hand, offline reputation management focuses on the public’s perception outside the digital space. Today, we see how crucial reputation management is for all businesses across all industries. Taking reputation management seriously is a must if you wish for your organization to prosper.
Why It Is Important
We can go on and talk about several reasons why reputation management is essential. It has loads of value, but the most valuable one is that it provided you the opportunity to counter negative feedback from the public. Eliminating these negative comments will give you a successful corporate image, which will, in return, attract more customers.
Warming the hearts of your clients will make them remember you without even trying too much. Potential customers will also see this, which convinces them to use your products and services. With good reputation management, you can have a full digital image and a customer base that will continue supporting your business.
4 SOPs in Reputation Management
1. Produce Happy and Satisfied Customers
Above all of the procedures you should do to manage your business’s reputation is making sure that your customers are happy and satisfied with your product. Making sure that these two are met will enable you to have an excellent first impression of them. As a result of an excellent first impression, they will naturally come back to you, leave good feedback, share the product or service to other people they know, and even recommend for them to try it for themselves.
2. Uphold Quality Response Time
Aside from making sure that your customers are satisfied and happy, you must also ensure that your business upholds a high standard of response time to all customer inquiries. This means that you address their concerns and queries in the fastest possible time that you can. We like to aim for a high standard response time within a couple of hours, if not faster, and one business day at the absolute latest.
When your customers give you questions and complaints about your product or service, it will be best to respond to them quickly and fairly. We do not want them to feel neglected, as this can probably be the root cause of more problems. Some of these include them venting out their fury and negative sentiments on different social media platforms or review sites, which will be seen by the greater public.
3. Be Understanding and Empathetic
No matter how hard it may be, for some instances, be understanding and empathetic with your customer service. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” There will be times where your patience will get tested, but always try your best to handle angry customers with your heart and not your head, and remember that yelling at a customer is not an option. Empathy is the best way to show your customers that you understand where they are coming from and that you care.
Additionally, being angry when they also are just is not going to achieve anything for you or them. While it is not always possible that your employee assigned to answer their queries can solve all of their problems, showing empathy and understanding will make them feel that their concerns matter and are validated. Holding an onboarding meeting can also be valuable to train your employees in addressing these concerns, so they know how to approach each customer type.
4. Closely Manage Review Sites
Lastly, learn to closely manage your review sites and ask your biggest supporters to leave five-star reviews for you as it makes sense. Over time, you should have a library of hundreds of positive reviews online, further strengthening your company brand and trustworthiness.
These reviews will help you establish your image, especially to prospective clients. To put it simpler, when someone hears about a new product, service, or app from another person, their first move is to check it on Google. If you immediately see hundreds of five-star reviews, it should incline you to feel more confident in the suggestion. Whereas if you Google and see almost zero reviews or very mixed reviews online, you may think twice and look for other alternatives.
Why Reputation Management is a Must
Invest your money, time, and effort in establishing the reputation of your brand online. This may sound tedious and complicated, but the long-term results and benefits will surely be worth it as your business goes through its daily undertakings. In our digital age, you need to take your brand reputation online seriously, and these four things that we have broken down for you can help.
Establish a good reputation online, and it will bring you hundreds and eventually thousands of new customers even with you noticing it. Though some businesses often neglect this and do not consider reputation management something valuable, they will soon realize it when they compare themselves to those who take this matter seriously.
