Build a Rapid Deployment Force to Protect Your Brand Reputation

If your business comes under attack, are you prepared to take quick action in order to protect your brand reputation?

How Fast Can You Deploy to Protect Your Brand Reputation?

For better or for worse, consumer reviews, raves and rants can have an almost instant impact on sales, leads and referrals. When your brand reputation is at stake, having a plan that includes fast action is critical.

It has never been easier for a happy customer to tell the world how great a brand is, and it has never been easier for someone who is unhappy with a brand to damage its reputation and negatively impact sales. Laying out a brand reputation management plan that allows for quick deployment is the best plan of action for today’s brand marketer.

You Shouldn’t Need to Convene a Committee to Resolve a Customer Complaint

Back then (before the advent of social networks, blogs and other self-publishing media) when a customer complained by phone or in writing – and I mean handwriting – you had the luxury of time. Time to convene a committee, call a meeting, consider all your option, craft a response and ask the legal team to review it before responding.

Now you have minutes. Maybe an hour. Tops.

Why does it matter?

• 26% of survey respondents said negative social commentary tarnished their company’s brand reputation
• 15% of brands lost customers due to negative social media.
• 11% of brands know they lost revenue due to negative social media

Consumers that contact a business with a question or complaint expect a response within an hour (new survey by Social Media Marketing University via newswire.net). However, despite consumer expectations, the study also found that more than half of all are not ready to put effective strategies into action to manage potentially damaging reviews and social comments.

Given the study’s finding that only one quarter of brands have not received complaints or questions via social networks, one would expect that most brands have identified who will respond and how they will handle potentially damaging comments and reviews. However, more than half of those surveyed said they needed about a day to respond and more than one quarter said it might take up to a week or longer, including an astounding 21% of brands that simply never responded. What’s more, nearly 25% of survey respondents said they did not have any strategy in place to manage negative social commentary!

Little wonder then that many consumers who expect fast answers but find themselves waiting a day – a week – or even longer for a brand to respond when they raise an issue that is vitally important to them become frustrated or angry.

Consumers expect brands with 24×7 portals (websites, social networks, etc.) to have real people monitoring these channels on a constant and consistent basis. In the absence of a speedy response (or any response) they will often conclude that the brand does not value their patronage, problem or input.

Put Your Brand Reputation Rapid Deployment Force Toolkit Together

1. Monitoring and More Research

You cannot fix what you will not acknowledge; however, you cannot acknowledge what you do not know!

Consumers with questions and complaints may approach a brand directly; however, they may also leave comments on review sites or send them out into the digital universe. Today’s brand reputation management cannot be accomplished without multi-channel monitoring of social network and review sites as well as conducting research to discover other brand mentions.

2. Expectation-Setting Scripts and Solid Solutions

There’s a reason most brand websites include a FAQ (frequently asked questions) section. The majority of questions, comments and complaints a brand will receive online or off should be fairly predictable.

Given that you and your staff should be able to come up with a list of the most common scenarios that might trigger questions or comments from less-than-happy followers, from this list you should be able to write up scripts that can be cut and pasted, communicated over the phone, from across the counter, or anywhere the response needs to be provided.

Scripts should include information about what you will do or when they can expect to find out what you will do, in cases where you need some additional time to research solutions.

Solutions should be solid enough to compensate not only for the customer’s concern or loss; and in some cases may also need to be solid enough to compensate for the lack of trust they may now have toward your brand. In other words, you may need to go the extra mile in order to prevent damage to your brand’s image.

By establishing protocol ahead of time and putting scripts and solutions at the disposal of your staff you will be able to satisfy a majority of customer complaints and concerns. It might be tougher to identify those situations where your brand needs to go beyond the call of duty, but you can get an idea of what type of situations could be most damaging to your brand not only over time through experiences within your organization, but by doing social media research of competitors and other brands to see how they handle complaints and negative comments.

3. Follow Up and Follow Through

Once expectations have been set, follow through on your promises whether that is to provide a solution, conduct internal research or provide additional communication. Don’t miss your own deadlines!

4. Assignment of Responsibility, Rewards and Repercussions

Like other operational responsibilities, brand management, monitoring and communication tasks should be assigned to specific individuals. Benchmarking, goal setting and consequences for achieving or failing to fulfill these responsibilities should also be addressed, and those responsible should be aware of just how important it is to protect the brand’s most vital asset: its reputation!

You might also enjoy reading: What Does Your Brand Boil Down To?  with six questions to help you discover what is really at the heart and soul of your brand.