If your online reputation was tarnished, it is a certainty that your business is suffering. This is something that we have to properly assess in business at all times. There is nothing that will hurt you, your career or your company as having bad online reputation. In most cases, if the damage done is too high, you will need to hire professionals for online reputation repair. However, if the problems are not so serious, you can take necessary steps to improve online reputation alone. You can easily learn about them on the internet. Just make sure that you also respect the golden rules that are going to be presented below.
The Customer Is Always Right
Every single businessman knows that this is not the case but when referring to reputation management, this does not refer to being right or wrong. What we have to understand is that you have to always acknowledge that the opinion expressed by the customer is the one that he has. Your goal is not to try to change it with reputation repair. Your goal is to take it into account and acknowledge it.
As an example, let us say that you find a review in which a client tells you that customer support was not proper. Instead of saying that it was and the customer is wrong, you should ask for feedback. Tell him that you are sorry for the inconveniences that appeared and that you want to know what went wrong so that you can fix it in the future. Even if the customer is outrageous, your reputation will be a little repaired as you took the time to deal with the problem instead of hiding it.
Online Reputation Repair Is Not A Math Problem
So many tackle online reputation repair as it being a math problem. This means that there is a belief that when more positive reviews appear than negative reviews reputation will be positive. That is completely incorrect and an incredibly bad way to look at things. Some of the negative reviews can be really damaging and will hurt your business more than hundreds of satisfied customers that were incredibly happy with what you offered.
When you focus on online reputation repair the idea is not to create new positive reviews and try to make the negative ones disappear. The idea is to take everything on a case-by-case basis. Being active and always involved in discussions about your company and your services is what will help you out the most in this equation.
Social Media Is Vital
When a problem appears, people are going to basically flood your online social media profiles. For most businesses out there it is vital that there is someone that would answer negative reviews posted on social media with a downtime that is as low as possible. While that is definitely difficult, it is vital for most businesses because of the huge influence that social media has these days on shopping decisions. Any online reputation repair strategy that does not focus on communication through social media interaction will be difficult to implement.