Before making a purchase, buyers ask two questions:
Whether the product or service meets the declared characteristics.
Has a sufficient reputation developed around the brand in order to entrust it with your money and not run into scammers?
Based on this question, you can understand that the reputation of your brand is one of the most important indicators that the buyer pays attention to when making a deal. A good reputation increases customer loyalty, the value of your company in the market and helps to position you as a leader in your field.
We live in an era of abundance and speed. And for this we pay either with money or with reputation. As practice shows, money is cheaper. Because building a reputation takes a lot more time and resources than making money. If the company's reputation were human, it would say, "I am hard to raise and easy to lose."
People search the internet for your company and make purchasing decisions based on the information they find. Hence, it is important to have a strategy for getting good reviews and effectively responding to bad ones.
In this article, I will share 10 ways to build a consistently good company reputation online.
1. Production or sale of high-quality goods / services.
No matter how trite it may sound, the quality of goods / services is the most important element in the formation of your reputation. You can create an insanely beautiful website, bring goods to your home, or drop them from space to anywhere in the world, it will not matter if the buyer sees a discrepancy with the information presented on the site.
2. Improve customer satisfaction.
Everything is simple here. A customer whose needs have been met with a product stays with you longer, spends a lot of money on your products, and comes back to you again and again.
Customer satisfaction not only contributes to the development of your business financially, but also directly affects your brand reputation. A client who was provided with a quality product / service, while being given a little more attention and care regarding his problem, will gladly share his positive experience with friends and colleagues, which will be a good impetus for the formation of your reputation.
3. Focus on the customer experience.
The quality of customer service is a very important indicator of a consumer's purchasing decision, along with price and quality. If you do not have a great customer service approach, potential buyers will look for a competitor to do it for you.
There are many ways to improve your customer experience. These include:
Contacting each client individually once a quarter (at least).
Sending surveys to customers to identify areas where you can make improvements based on the feedback you collect.
Maintain constant contact with customers through email newsletters or other forms of company or product updates.
Providing world class customer support (see below).
4. Provide world-class customer support.
The faster and more efficiently you resolve customer support issues, the better your brand reputation will be.
Be sure to offer multiple support channels (phone, live chat, email, social media, etc.) so that customers who are having problems can easily reach you through the channel they prefer.
Use dedicated support teams to ensure that every support request is handled by an expert and resolved on the first try every time.
5. Use social listening tools to respond to negative comments.
When someone posts a negative comment about your brand on social media, you should respond as quickly as possible.
Negative sentiment spreads like wildfire on social media, so you need to put out this fire as soon as possible. You can do this using social listening tools. One of these solutions is our platform called CIS. With this solution, you can respond to reviews in social media. networks in a matter of minutes since the system will notify you by mail or SMS about all negative comments.
When you receive a notification, respond to the comment as quickly as possible and be diplomatic and empathetic in your response. Eventually, your answer will be publicly available. A helpful and humble answer will help your company build a reputation for being a customer-centric brand.
6. Develop social media
Maintaining your own business pages on social networks is a must-have attribute of modern business. This allows you to get access to a wide target audience without significant financial investments.
Also, maintaining social networks helps to simplify communication between the client and the business. Buyers can at any time ask a question or leave feedback in a simplified form, without resorting to complex interaction mechanisms.
7. Improve employee satisfaction.
Many companies overlook employee satisfaction when developing a brand reputation management strategy. This is a big mistake!
Employee engagement programs do wonders for increasing employee satisfaction. According to the Employment Research Institute, engaged, satisfied employees perform 20% better than unemployed employees and are much more likely to become brand loyalists.
Satisfied, motivated employees work harder, have higher morale, care more about your company's success, and will do whatever they can to help meet customer needs. In short, satisfied employees provide excellent customer service, which is directly related to a positive brand reputation.
8. Take care of your brand supporters.
Brand advocates are arguably the most effective tool in your brand reputation management kit. These are satisfied customers, employees, or anyone who loves your brand enough to speak positively about it and recommend it to others.
Provide good customer service, maintain satisfied employees and customers, and they are likely to go to social media to recommend your brand.
This is tantamount to free word of mouth advertising that consumers trust more than traditional brand promotion. Brand supporters can raise your reputation from average to exceptional.
9. Create case studies of how useful your product / service is.
In fact, before making a deal, it is very important for the client to see how your product helps to solve certain problems. In this case, nothing better can be thought of how to show new customers ready-made cases of using your product by other customers.
Ready-made cases help buyers understand the product in more detail, find out how it works by contacting the person to whom the case is dedicated, and form positive views about your brand as a business that is ready to share its successful projects.
10. Don't buy or write positive reviews.
Do not stoop to writing or buying fake positive reviews. This path is a dead end: if the consumer feels false, then they will forever cease to trust your company.
Output
In a fierce competition for consumer trust, maintaining a positive brand reputation has never been more important to a business.
Use the above best practices to develop a brand reputation management strategy and implement it as soon as possible.
Focus on quality and speedy customer and employee satisfaction and your reputation as a customer-centric brand will grow steadily.