How to fix online reputation? 3 Solutions
There’s no question that the Internet age has given businesses a wealth of opportunities in terms of marketing, customer reach, and much more. But there’s also a flip side to this equation that isn’t so positive. With so many digital channels to choose from, disgruntled customers (or competitors that feel threatened by you) can discredit your company online and weaken your reputation by posting negative comments in a variety of places.
Whether it’s on review sites, social media sites, or on your own website itself, unfavorable feedback can really end up hurting your brand image and dissuading potential customers from giving your company a try. Here are three ways in which you can repair your online reputation.
Hear it From your Customers, Before Everyone Else Does
By the time a customer decides to air their dirty laundry with your brand in a public format like on social media or a review site, they probably feel like they’ve exhausted all other options. It’s also likely they feel unheard (or unacknowledged) by your company or customer service team. This means that at some point, there was a breakdown in how customer complaints are being handled.
One of the best ways to get ahead of potential issues before they make their way onto a highly visible, digital stage is by regularly collecting feedback from customers. Your customer service team should be trained to ask customers about their experience with your company when they’re speaking with them, but this isn’t enough on its own.
If you haven’t used a formal survey method yet, consider implementing Net Promoter Score and/or CSAT. The methods vary from one another, but both of these tools help you collect insights into your customers’ satisfaction. When you learn about what’s working and isn’t working for your customers, you can make adjustments accordingly. This allows you to better meet customer needs and greatly diminish the likelihood of negative feedback spilling over into the digital sphere.
Protect your Brand from Digital Destruction
So, what happens if you already have something damaging written about you on a popular review site or as a comment on your own website? Is there any way to remove these, or are you stuck with them forever? In many cases, especially on third-party sites, you can’t get rid of comments simply because you don’t like what they say. But, you absolutely have the power to remove inflammatory comments from your own digital channels.
At Conectys, we offer content moderation services, which means we stay on top of removing any harmful or damaging critiques from your pages. Under the umbrella of these services, we also flag content on third-party sites if it’s extreme enough to warrant a review by the site itself. In many cases, we can get certain posts removed. Either way, it’s important you have someone monitoring what’s being said about your company online so you can stay aware of it and address it whenever/however you need to.
Shift the Ratio in your Favor
If you’ve done all you can to get rid of your worst reviews or the most incendiary comments being made about you, but still have some lingering out there – is there any recourse for you? Yes – the best bet at this point is to outweigh the negative public feedback with positive public feedback. Ask your most satisfied customers to write reviews for you, and make sure to put together glowing testimonials and case studies when a customer is willing, that you share on your site and through social media too.
Increasing online reputations with Conectys
You may never completely remove all digital vitriol aimed at your business, especially as you grow, but you can do a lot to shape a more positive brand image online.
We also recommend reading this article on how to scale customer success.
