One of the major issues at the social media panel I was a speaker of has been online reputation management. While I prefer the more proactive ways of reputation building instead of the emergency like reputation crisis management nonetheless most of the businesses not familiar with blogging and social media need basic advice on how to deal with bad press online.
So I decided to collect 8 very simple steps of emergency reputation management. These measures should help in cases where a forum or blog post shows up in the Google top 10 for your product or brand.
Most importantly before we start thinking about fending off a reputation issue we have to agree that we do not want to sweep things under the rug. Many people mistake reputation management for just that. Reputation management is about dealing with negative issues, facing not ignoring them.
- Discover negative publicity early via simple tools like Google Alerts or Technorati Watchlist.
- Reply as a representative of your company. Example: “I work at x and we have lots of clients using y with good results.” Do not make these clients up of course.
- Show that you care. Example: “We have contacted our local dealer to deal with your problems, he should call you shortly.” Contact your local retailer to just do that.
- Be matter of fact. Example: “This seems to be a serious issue you have. We will do everything to ensure your and other clients satisfaction. Please give us some time to deal with it internally.” Then be quick to deal with it.
- Offer a refund if the client is too disgruntled already.
- Offer the publisher a way to test the product or a new version of it if he hasn’t before or the last version failed.
- Link to other clients or positive cases studies, even within your reply.
- Contact the publisher directly to research and sort out the issue, do not rely solely on the published part.
While employing these simple measures always remember that you need to address the real underlying issue. Inherently flawed products or services will make others vent their frustration too so make sure you tackle larger issues not one by one but systematically even by discontinuing a product.
Also do not call your lawyers unless this is a evident case of slander. Silencing legitimate bloggers and consumer advocates will backfire manifold. You might end up with lots of negative publicity.
Excellent article, and your visitors may be interested in a related piece, “The Role of Search Engine Optimization in Crisis Management,” which can be found at:
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/nl/crisis-manager-080515.html
Best regards,
Jonathan Bernstein
President
Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc.
A couple of good points on here, esp #1, but most should be pretty straight forward & obvious to any company with reputation issues. Any company who has problems with clients should be doing these things already, whether online or not.
You both think everybody should do all that and more already? I do too, but most German businesses don’t do that until now. They rather call their lawyer, write fake user comments or risk other reputation emergencies.
Probably the most important point in this article is towards the end: be sure that you’re fixed the root cause of the complaint, in addition to responding to the complainant. In my work with automatic renewals offers for subscription websites, this is paramount, as otherwise the trend itself will be noticed and haunt you.
Great comments from Jordan. Managing client expectations in any business is critical. I too have seen many companies that come to us to repair their online image, only to find out that they have no interest in actually fixing the problem and taking care of the customer, just their negative comments.
Looking forward to hearing more from Jordan at the upcoming conferences.
Great post!
In response to the specific need you are describing, we’ve created http://www.lookuppage.com , an online tool that help you manage and control your online presence, and track who is looking for you. You can join for free, or opt in to our paid service and guarantee top position for your page across all leading search engines, using SEO and PPC.
Hope that helps!
E. Furman,
http://www.lookuppage.com
this post is a useful reminder of how to deal with customer services issues professionally, thanks
This is a good and very helpful piece of advice, what about when a sole person is being slandered/defamed? how do you combat that? What if the person who is doing the slandering isn’t interested in trying to resolve the problem
Scott Dylan
Excellent information – thank you. Most people don’t know how important the things that you highlighted are. Thanks for helping spread the good word!
Regards,
Judy.
There are lots of good online reputation companies about. The key is value for money. I found ClydeStan http://www.clydestan.com most helpful in their approach and costing structure. They specialize mainly in celebrity reputation but I am sure they take on other clients, too. It seems they have connections behind the scenes where actual links and posts are being deleted and not only pushed down in search engines. I have used them twice now and the results are just fine. No problems, would recommend anytime.