Business Reputation – Slow To Build Quick To Lose

What’s in a reputation?

You may wonder how to build a good reputation for your business… Well let us say straight away, building a great reputation can take years.  Therefore, to build a great reputation and secure new clients and customers, you need consistently happy customers.

People often trust organic referrals, but we (as customers) also trust numbers. So if you have consistent great reviews coming in, you will be gaining a good reputation that people will trust.

Provide great service

Your aim when going about your business is to build trust within the community of people you want to attract as customers. So if you build trust in your company, this builds your reputation and attracts new customers.

On the other hand, a loss of reputation can be the downfall of any business.

To earn trust and a good reputation can take a long time, it rarely happens over night. Therefore you’ll find that building trust is something that comes with consistent good work, service and product. The more good reputation you earn the more business you will get.

How to build good reputation

To build your reputation you need to look at maintaining excellence in every part of your business.

• the product you sell needs to be good quality and value
• the before, during and after sales service should be well above average
• and your staff need to be knowledgeable about every aspect of what you deliver

Know your customers

Take time to get to know your customers. Listen to them and don’t always try to sell to them. Be interested in what they have to tell you about themselves and their life. This way you will be able to help them with their decision making when buying from you.

Go the extra mile

Meeting the expectations of your customers, but giving a little unexpected extra will increase your reputation enormously. A small gesture will go a long way to making a customer into a happy customer. Happy customers build your reputation for you.

Present your business well

First impressions are lasting impressions. Make sure your website properly represents your business. If you sell high end products or services make sure your site, premises and staff reflects this and appeal to high end clients.

Building your reputation takes time

Because building your company’s good reputation takes time you don’t want to ruin all your hard work.

Follow up all purchases shortly afterwards to make sure your customer is satisfied with their purchase or service. Using a reputation management system like ours, or even just a hand written note can help achieve this.

Using a reputation management system will allow you to quickly and easily follow up your customer with a request for feedback, and ultimately a review.  Customers may read your good reviews, and this will improve your reputation in their eyes, and you may just have won a new customer.

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Loss of reputation

Building your business reputation will take time. Losing it can happen instantly.

How quickly can you lose your reputation?

Building your business reputation will take time, but losing it can happen instantly. It’s a sad fact which can only be avoided by following the steps above, and getting consistent great reviews coming in. However, bad customer service may get your name mentioned in social media, or review sites like this… and your business doesn’t want that!

Loss of trust

Losing the trust of a few customers can spread like wildfire across your whole buying community. A lapse in your judgement, lowering the standard of the service you provide or unhelpful staff are all ways of a quick demolition of your hard earned reputation.

Some loss of trust can be big ones like doing something illegal. However your reputation can suffer when the issue is much less important. Unhelpful staff or a broken promise or deadline can be just as damaging.

Customer service failures

Customer service is everything. The moment this fails you are on a slippery slope to poor reputation for your business.

Why would anyone recommend your company to friends or family if they were unhappy with your service? Poor customer service can lead to your customers writing bad reviews about your company.  There are a few tips on how to respond to bad online reviews to turn the situation around, but it’s best if this is not required in the first place.

Get Ambassadors for your company

You want your customers to be brand ambassadors for your business not to scare people off with poor reviews or a bad reputation.

If you train your staff to understand the importance of good customer service, then your standards high, and you’ll be on to a winner.

So how easy is it to lose a good reputation?

Sadly, it can be fast. With today’s social media and online reviews, people are able to post their experienced (both good and bad) quickly, and for the world to see.

Stay involved with your customers, encourage your staff to give great customer service, get feedback form your customers, and direct them to give you great reviews.  From now on, it is becoming more difficult for companies to manage all the different review platforms, as there are so many, but with our reputation management software and tools, we can help take care of it for you.