Service oriented business are in constant contact with their customers, each interaction builds their reputation. Each time a customer has a good experience, they will tell a few friends. When a customer has a bad experience, they tell on average 12 people. A 2005 study by Informative Inc found that negative word-of-mouth has an average of 2.4 percent more financial impact than positive comments.
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” – Warren Buffett
What impact do you think the last 8 years has had? 2005 was the year Youtube started, “thefacebook” was renamed, Twitter wasn’t invented yet and Yelp launched their website for online business reviews. These days, Yelp has more than 47 million reviews, Google heavily features business profiles and reviews across all their products. 92% of internet users read product reviews and 89% of people say reviews influence their purchasing decisions. A Harvard Business Review study found a difference of one star in an online review profile can lead to a 5-9% difference in revenues. It is clear business online reputation impacts your bottom line regardless of your web presence. The trend of increasing transparency and visibility on the web is also clear, so you should not be surprised to find things about your services.
The biggest thing business owners can do is to provide good customer service in the first place! Reduce the number of unhappy customers reduces the number of nastygrams sent out. Beyond the obvious, however, businesses should provide a way for customers to give them feedback. Maybe that simply means asking the customer if they were satisfied before they leave or use a form to provide them a place for give the feedback. A customer will be happy if you acknowledge their feedback and if you consider making changes that could affect the root cause of the problem.
What else can you do to affect your reputation? Do a Google Search for your business or product and see what comes up. Try a search using the business plus add “sucks” or “stinks”. Consider registering your business on the sites that have reviews about your business so you can be informed. If you find a bad a review, keep your hat on, you have a couple options. A bad but legitimate review that meets a courteous, thoughtful response can diffuse the customer and reduce its impact on the next customer who reads it. If it’s slanderous, try the “Flag as inappropriate” if there is an option, contact the business or hosting company and ask them to remove the libellous comments.