Managing Your Online Business Reputation
Given the shredding Gordon Ramsay’s took this week during a trip to Australia, I thought it was probably a good idea to spend some time talking about managing your reputation, in your case when running an online business.
In the days before the web, a good business reputation was much easier to maintain. If you had bad service from someone, you would offer up the usual “I’ll tell all my friends not to come here”, and then maybe if you remembered, your displeasure would reach about a dozen people.
Jump ahead to the age of Facebook, Twitter, SMS (and any other means you use to keep in touch), and all of a sudden you face a very different beast. If a customer now experiences bad service, they have the ability to not only tell their friends instantly, but the opportunity to tell a whole lot of people who are followers on Twitter and friends on Facebook that can number in the hundreds or even thousands – and these are not necessarily even people they know that well, if at all.
Given online business’ at times faceless nature, a single bad review can reverberate around the internet and irreparably damage your reputation, particularly if you are a service business. Managing a customer you are dealing with on a virtual level is tricky because they are relying on communication tools and the platform you provide rather than face to face and on their own terms.
One of the biggest explosions in web sites in recent times have been customer review sites, covering everything from cars, electrical goods, to restaurants, and these are often a first stop for anyone researching major purchases, nights out and so on.Usually, these kind of sites will aggregate feedback ratings, and when you have disappointed enough people, you begin to disappear further and further down the list.
eBay practically invented the feedback system on the web, and it continues to evolve. Recently they removed the option for sellers to give feedback, an acknowledgment that the buyers are effectively the heart of the site, making it ever more important for the sellers to get their customer service right.
There are some simple steps you can take to making sure that you provide a good customer service experience and maintain a good reputation.
Make Yourself Contactable
Nothing is more irksome than a website that you have to spend more than 30 seconds on to find an email address or a phone number to call. Put these both in a very prominent spot, preferably on every page. Make sure you have a relevant email address for what a customer may want, and not leave them to guess if it’s the right one. Using one such as support@yoursite.com is ideal, as it clearly defines that this is where people should contact if they have an issue. Similarly, put a personal email address on there to go someway to avoiding the issue of your site being faceless.
Be Timely In Responding
Set up an auto responder to your support email address (in fact every email address), or a message on your answering service, letting the sender know that they will receive a reply within X Hours, and make sure you get back to them in this timeframe. While customers want an instant outcome, this may not always be possible, but telling them when they should expect a response by will help.
Have Clear Policy, But Be Prepared to Review It
Make sure that your terms and conditions of sale, and any policies regarding returns and refunds of your products are very easy to find on your website. Make sure they are ALL there. If you have an online ordering system, make sure a customer has access to them at the point of purchase, and perhaps even has to check a box to say they have understood it. Be prepared however to review each query against the policy though, as not every case is created equal.
Treat Every Customer as Equal
Finally, understand that what you may think is a low value sale could represent a major investment from your customer. This was a hard lesson I learned in my very early days as a press sales rep. I had a customer book a very small ad valued at about 5% of the sale I made before it. The ad ran in the wrong spot, and the customer got angry. Being green I didn’t want to have to compensate for what I thought was a pretty minor error, and so for weeks this dragged out until it eventually moved up to my manager’s manager, the result being that we had to compensate even more than what we would have originally.
Online reputation management is not rocket science, but the rules are different in the virtual world than if you had a bricks and mortar shop front. Ultimately, making sure that complaints and concerns are dealt with promptly and reach an agreeable outcome will make sure people come back and tell their friends about it.
On a final note, I read a fantastic article last night about Tony Hsieh and Zappos, the online shoe store. Aside from being just an inspiring business story, to me it highlighted what great company culture combined with customer service can do for a business. Check it out here.
Tags: Best Practice, eBay, Feedback, Online Reputation, Twitter
Posted on June 11th, 2009 at 7:40 am
Great article, Ben.
It is so true that one comment or video can very quickly become the next “shot heard round the world”. The speed at which information and opinions travel now is sometimes overwhelming, especially when given the quantity. While consumers may not see the Internet as the first outlet to let off steam when they are unhappy about a company’s product or service, it is certainly where the information can begin a path to notoriety. Just looking at the video from the Domino’s employees, for example, we can surely imagine that the employees’ first thought was not, “let’s make a viral video that will destroy our company’s reputation worldwide”. They surely joked around in the kitchen long before that and damaged Domino’s reputation in the eyes of certain customers, but it was via the Internet that their message truly took force.
Thanks again, Ben.
Best,
Michelle
@Synthesio