Some of the most common crises that organizations find themselves facing involve reputation damage, and these days the origin of this damage is more than likely the Internet.
In an interview for the Wildfire Marketing Group's Thought Leader Thursday blog, reputation management consultant Andy Beal gave his take on why it's so important to have listen to their customers before issues escalate to crisis level.
The biggest mistake is simply not having official channels in place to allow your customers to complain. Most disgruntled customers post to blogs and Twitter because they feel like they are not being heard by your company. They get frustrated with your lack of customer service and they think to themselves, “I’ll show them, I’ll post a negative review on Yelp/Twitter/Blog.” If companies would simply look at how they’re listening to their customers, and how they escalate and resolve customer service complaints, many of the reputation problems you see would never make it to the web.
The ultimate goal of crisis management is to prevent crises from ever occurring.
The BCM Blogging Team
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/
Friday, November 6, 2009
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2 comments:
There's a relevant article from April on Slate that talks about TSA's blog, Evolution of Security, and how that gives disgruntled customers a place to sound off to a real person, and maybe get some level of satisfaction.
The thing that many people will overlook is that Blogger Bob is successful because he's there all of the time, cultivating a community that gives him, and TSA, the benefit of the doubt in a crisis.
http://www.slate.com/id/2215822
-Jimmy
Jimmy makes a second point (perhaps inadvertently). A recorded complaint line is going to do no good; it has to be a real live person. Otherwise, the disgruntled consumer is just going to feel like he's been 'blown off' again.
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