All organizations are exposed to reputation damage regardless of their structure, size, and operations. Any risks to your reputation are considered alarming, but the damage could lead to a crisis and has even forced others to go through a rebranding strategy. Remember that your reputation is one of your most significant assets, and you must preserve it. There are instances that it will only need a simple uncontrolled rumor for the consumers to lose their trust and confidence in your business.
Online Reputation Damage: How to Manage the Risk
Accidents in the workplace can lead to lost revenues, injury, and possible property damages. Nonetheless, if the business can immediately resume its operations, all problems could be mitigated. On the contrary, if a company is exposed due to malpractices such as a discriminatory hiring process, it will be challenging for them to attract the interest of the top talents in the industry. Without proper reputation damage management, this will significantly affect the viability of the business.
Managing Reputation Damage Should be Added to Your Planning and Strategy
If you are positioning your business for success, you must understand how reputational damage could affect the company. If not, you will be caught unprepared and forever lose the public’s trust. It would be best to understand the weakness and strengths of the company. You also need to identify all the attributes that could be related to your reputation. Invite the key members of your organization to attend a meeting and brainstorm the possible risky scenarios that will damage your reputation. You should also determine the level of risks. Listen to your people since they will have a valuable contribution to this discussion, especially the employees interacting with customers.
Create a warning sign or an indicator for all these risky scenarios. This will help you take the right action before a crisis happens. Remember that reputation damage started from a negative input of a customer or employee that was ignored. For instance, a simple complaint about the cleanliness of your place can lead to the public thinking that your business is unsafe for them. By looking at the indicators, you can raise your company’s standard in cleanliness before the situation becomes awry.
Controlling the Process
Reputation Damage management strategy includes reducing the probability that a reputational crisis will occur. It should also state how to reduce the severity if you can’t prevent it. Therefore, there should be a distinct procedure, policies, and standardization to address this. You should also arm your people with the right technology to control the effect of a crisis. For instance, providing the customers with top-notch service and quality products reduces the likelihood of this incident.
If things happen, you have the power to lessen the gravity of the damages by educating your people about the procedures and policies that you have in place. If it has happened before, learning about the things and adjusting your standards will help prevent a similar issue from reoccurring. Start by treating all your people fairly. The policies and amenities in place need to be carefully considered. If you are working with a third-party provider, you must be extra careful. Remember that they, too, will represent you.
Your Actions Dictate the Perception of the Consumers
The management should acknowledge that all the actions made by the company members will affect the consumers’ perception. They should understand that everyone is at risk of causing reputation damage. Therefore, choose managers that will lead by example. This will send positive messages to the other employees and the stakeholders. Remind your people about the procedures and policies. Conduct training and seminar to make them familiar with your standards. All your workers need to understand how to react appropriately to a situation and how to behave. They should also do everything in their power to properly manage the situation and prevent it from escalating.
Know and Manage their Expectations
When you understand the expectation of the clients, the steps that you must take to meet their expectations will be much more apparent to you. These expectations are provided by your company. It can be found in your product, landing page, and online reviews. If you give them empty promises, you are giving them false and high expectations which will lead to a reputation damage issue. Giving them promises that you can’t address will only backfire. Your clients will remember you as a company that can’t keep its words. Your company should have a document stating the expectations of your employees, shareholders, and customers. You should also enumerate the condition that will satisfy them.
Create Seamless Communication and Having a Positive Image
In different situations, it is imperative to keep seamless communication. People feel like the company values them if they can reach out to them anytime and receive a response within the expected timeframe. As you continue to implement this strategy, this will help you build a solid reputation. Thanks to this, even if a reputation damage situation happens in the future, you can keep the damage to a minimum. Some of the statements you want to deliver to the public include solid growth, good governance, transparency, and fantastic customer service. Do not expect that you will please everyone with this. There will be a time when you will encounter demanding customers. Therefore, focus first on satisfying the needs of your most vital stakeholders.
Response and Contingency Strategy
In the worst-case situation, your organization must have a comprehensive plan to respond swiftly to mitigate the problem. Treat every moment as crucial since this could reduce the affection and trust the public has developed over you. As the saying goes in marketing, it will take years for you to build your credibility, but only a few seconds to ruin it. While some businesses will undermine the risk of reputation damage, the dangers it poses to your organization are severe. Therefore, you must assign people to monitor this. Without a contingency plan to handle this scenario, it will take some time for you to reclaim your losses or recover from the damages.
What Are Some Methods to Prevent Possible Reputational Damages?
Here are some methods that will help you avoid the possibility of dealing with a reputational crisis. Follow them, and you can guarantee that you will be able to foresee the possible danger before it even happens.
Having a Solid Data Security
You want to make sure that you are protected against possible data breaches. It is common for hackers to gain access to your company’s confidential information. This can sometimes be out of your control. However, your reaction and protocol after this happens can create a massive difference. Whether the fault of the breach is due to a mishap in your company or not, the best way to handle this is to be upfront about the reputation damage issue.
You need to inform people affected by the hack and show them that you are on top of the situation. Being accountable and putting a drastic measure into action will help restore the people’s trust and show that you are still a safe place for them. You can use several methods to ensure that data breaches will never happen. For instance, you should have well-thought cyber practices and policies in place. They should be able to recognize a phishing scam at a glance.
- Purchase premium cyber insurance coverage.
- Establish a team of responders trained to handle the disastrous situation.
- You should have a threat analysis tool that will monitor suspicious activities. This will help you react appropriately.
- You need to have encryption professionals that will bolster your security.
- Be sure that your security protocols are constantly updated. Know that new methods of hacking appear daily.
Stay on Tract with Customer Service Issues
Social media allows businesses to interact and easily reach out to their customers. However, it also gave them a voice. They can quickly post their dissatisfaction with your service or the treatment they received from your staff. This kind of reputation damage is challenging to overcome. The negative reviews will leave a digital footprint that everyone can see. One way to avoid negative reviews is to train all your customer support on how to interact with the customers appropriately. Reminding them frequently of the importance of these people and that they are pivotal in generating positive reviews will help immensely.
Another excellent method to avoid negative reviews is by empowering your employees who will have first-hand interaction with your audience. Teach them how they can rectify the situation appropriately. Remind them that they must consciously preserve the excellent relationship between the customers and the organization. Part of managing reputation requires you to hire the best people. It will be challenging to achieve that if you have a poor reputation. Consider choosing people who showed some complex and exceptional skills and, at the same time, a vulnerable and empathetic side. Let’s say you hired the most skilled and knowledgeable applicant, but they don’t know how to work effectively with your people or customers, then they will not contribute immensely to your company’s growth.
Keep your People Engaged
Another way to prevent reputation damage is to keep your people engaged and happy. If your employees have a high satisfaction rate, this will translate to how they interact with the customers. Start by treating your people fairly. Your practices and policies should be centered on your people. If your employees have something to say about the company, listen to them. Even if you disagree with their views and opinions, you should still make sure that you listen to them.
Avoid Speaking Unverified Statements
Never say or post anything on social media that may not be true. Today, it only takes a single click for the risk of reputation damage to happen. Sharing of fake news will often happen on social media. However, it has also been reported in the advertisement of various companies. For instance, there have been numerous incidents wherein a high-frequency device claimed it could drive away urban pests. Unfortunately, further study proved this is inaccurate and nowhere closer to the truth. You should also avoid making comments about your competitors. Any distinctions you want the people to make between you and your rivals must be supported by accurate facts and evidence. False claims can lead to legal actions, and you want to avoid that at all costs.
Educating Your Employees
You need to educate your employees, particularly those in the marketing department, social media managers, and those who interact with your customers. Tell them about the possible risks and repercussions related to the cybercrime law. Remind them of the consequences when they say something inaccurate. If they are not 100% sure about what they will share online, it is best to verify it first or never post it. The business will always have to deal with the aftermath of an employee behaving unprofessionally. Moreover, it will influence not only those involved parties but also all the workers down the bottom line.
Fix Errors Immediately
If it is already out in the digital world, it will only take time for this to spread all over the newsfeed. It is impossible to stop it. One effective reputation damage management to this is to own up to your mistake. Tell them that there were lapses in your people and that you are currently investigating the source of the problem. Inform them about the possible fixes you are doing to correct the system.
Apologize properly. Tell them that you are deeply sorry for the inconvenience or hurt caused. However, it will not end on that. Stop posting for a while since you will only be bound to receive more hate from your audience. After a few days, inform them about the progress of your fix. You need to be transparent and public about how you deal with this crisis. People are more sensitive and involved nowadays. You need to assure them that you’ve made an effort to correct the errors your people made.
Reputation damage can lead to social crises, lost opportunities, and reduced profits. There will also be a decrease in the value of your company name. It is just too challenging to gauge this incident’s financial impact. There are ways to protect yourself from this, such as choosing the right insurance with the best coverage. However, prevention is always better. Remind your people of the things we mentioned here to avoid suffering from this event.
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