It is reported that the stock market baron Warren Buffett warned his employees, “If you lose the company’s money, I will be more tolerant. But if you lose the company’s reputation, I will be ruthless.”
In this age of the internet, online reputation management is of crucial importance. Even if your operations are perfect, you have a responsive customer service team, and you run things ethically; there is no guarantee that your online reputation will remain intact.
The nature of the internet is so fragile that any disgruntled employee or an unscrupulous competitor or an unhappy customer can post adverse remarks.
Thus, reputation management should be handled deftly and with the utmost care. Never ignore bad reviews and be under the impression that will only sort itself out. Remember that the longer the bad review remains on the internet, the greater the chances of your losing customers.
Reputation management requires customer engagement and meaningful communication. The engagement should be strategic, imaginative and targeted.
Of course, it is true that removing unflattering comments from the internet is difficult. You should immediately contact the customer that posted a bad review, rectify the situation and request for withdrawal of the review. In most cases, the concerned customer will oblige.
If a complaint is authentic, then do not hesitate to apologize publicly. This will send a robust signal that you care about your customers.
The best option is to make the adverse remarks inconspicuous. Flood the internet with a lost of positive reviews so that the negative reviews will be driven to the third or still lower pages of search results. You can request some of your happy customers to post positive reviews, and most of them will oblige.
When you are faced with online reputation management because of a critical issue that could turn crisis, act swiftly to defuse the situation. Contact the person that has posted the bad review, remedy the situation and gently persuade the customer to withdraw the adverse remarks.
Never be lulled into complacency about reputation management because the internet creates a perceptional environment where you have to monitor your perception all day, every day.
Any mischief-monger could deliberately spread canards through social media page. A competitor might post misleading information about your products or initiate a whisper campaign against your company.
Use tools like Google Alert to keep track of all mentions of your brand on the internet and act swiftly. When you address the negative reviews head-on, you have the opportunity to tell your side of the story and provide solutions.