Reputation Management Is a Problem/Opportunity for the Entire Company

Reputation Management Isn’t a Marketing Problem or an Operations Problem — It’s a Problem/Opportunity for the Entire Company

Charles Stiles, Business Evaluation Services Business Evaluation Services was founded by the current President, Charles Stiles. Charles comes from a background in retail; owning several retail gourmet food and gift stores in national malls for over 8 years. Quickly realizing the only way to differentiate his stores and stand out from the competition was to develop a consistent service culture and create a process for measuring the success of the training that was implemented. Through this process in 1996, Business Evaluation Services was founded. Today, BES is an International Mystery Shopper Company with over two decades of experience, serving a variety of industries.

At Business Evaluation Services, we’ve been helping brands manage their online reputation for over several years. If there’s anything we know after working with companies from dozens of industries, reputation management cannot, and should not, be owned by a single department within a business. Instead, for reputation management to work, it needs to be a priority for every department and person within a company.

What is Reputation Management?

Reputation management is the act of monitoring, influencing, and protecting what’s being said about your brand. Today, most of this takes place online. Reviews, social media, images, news articles, and blogs are all places a brand’s reputation can be influenced.

Offensive vs. Defensive Reputation Management Strategies

There are two ways to approach reputation management, either from an offensive or defensive standpoint. A great reputation management strategy will include both.

Offensive reputation management considers things like the brand’s online visibility, social media marketing, and surveys. The goal of an offensive reputation is to lead and control the conversation around your brand.

Defensive reputation management considers things like customer service and image monitoring. The goal is to prevent the spread of negative or inaccurate information about your brand.

Reputation Management for Marketing

The marketing department often owns reputation management initiatives. In addition, social media and PR initiatives naturally lie within the marketing team, while reviews and surveys provide much-needed insight for marketing strategy.

It’s a marketer’s job to make sure consumers can easily find and choose their brand over the competition. Reputation management allows marketers to promote the brand organically and provides valuable insight into how customers feel about the brand.

Reputation Management for Operations

Reputation management is a key part of operations. Brands can receive thousands of customer questions and complaints in reviews and social media comments daily. Responding to those reviews and comments is vital. Responding gives brands a chance to make things right and take the conversation off of a public platform. Additionally, consumers find that businesses that respond to reviews are 1.7x more trustworthy than those that don’t.

The operations department can also use reputation insight to deeper understanding the in-store experience at scale. Reviews are filled with unbiased feedback about the customer experience. Using Reputation Management can help brands identify the true sentiment about essential topics such as customer service, staff, cleanliness, and more.

Reputation Management for Human Resources

There are apparent reasons why human resources should prioritize reputation management. For example, customer reviews and comments frequently highlight employee behavior and performance. But in today’s job market, reputation management goes a lot deeper than getting feedback on current employees; it plays a key role in recruitment and hiring.

Just like consumers, prospective employees are reviewing your online reviews to determine whether or not to work for your company. No one wants to work for a company with a bad reputation. HR should be committed to protecting the brand reputation from the start by providing onboarding and training that will set them up to deliver exceptional customer service every time.

Reputation Management for The C-Suite

Let’s talk about how the C-Suite plays a role in reputation management. To get genuine buy-in for a company-wide initiative, the C-Suite needs to be invested in the results. Keeping the C-Suite engaged comes down to providing consistent reporting and insight into the progress of your reputation management goals.

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● Star Rating Growth ● Growth in Positive Review Volume ● Increase in Listing Actions Compared to Revenue ● Common CX Themes Found in Reviews ● Top Performing Stores ● Opportunities for Growth ● And more…

Reputation Management for Frontline Employees

The most important people to get invested in your reputation goals are your frontline workers. These are the people who will be interacting with your customers daily. Therefore, the actions of your frontline employees will have the most significant impact on your reputation.

Set frontline employees up for success by implementing comprehensive training around delivering positive customer service. Most importantly, measure your customer’s experience to make sure your required deliverables are being followed. Get frontline employees even more invested by offering incentives for reaching reputation goals. Recognizing how employees go above and beyond to deliver an exceptional customer experience can go a long way.

Managing your online reputation is not as simple as responding to a few reviews now and then. It indeed requires commitment from the entire company for your reputation management strategy to be successful. Therefore, our PRISM platform has partnered with the leader in online reputation management. Discover how we can help your brand by scheduling a time with one of our experts. ■