One of the most damaging things that can happen to a company's reputation is not necessarily customer complaints. It's employee complaints. This can actually go much farther than customer complaints as a nightmare for reputation management. The best thing to do is to cut it off at its source.
Think of it this way: A customer complaint could be seen as someone who just got an isolated faulty product, or it was an isolated incident of bad customer service. The reputation management of these situations isn't all that hard. Give them a refund or a coupon, and they're most likely satisfied.
In the case of an employee complaint, reputation management is much trickier. For one thing, if an employee blasts the company in a complaint website or on a personal blog, the general view is that they have an "insider experience." This tends to be perceived as more of a matter of overall company corruption rather than an isolated incident.
The best way to avoid doing damage control in these cases is to have open employee and company communications. The first and most basic step in this form of reputation management is to have an internal employee complaint/suggestion system. By the fact of its existence, this will help employee morale.
Of course, this system will have to be maintained. If an employee's complaint or suggestion isn't quickly acknowledged and addressed, they can begin to perceive that their voice doesn't matter. You wind up back at square one in your reputation management, and may even have to deal with them making external complaints.
The complaint/suggestion system should also have policies and procedures attached to it. While the existence of such a system is beneficial, some employees won't take it seriously unless it is clearly stated that all complaints and suggestions should go through this channel. In the interest of keeping the reputation management on an internal basis, there should be clearly stated penalties for exterior complaints.
The internal complaint and suggestion system can go a long way toward minimizing damage control. However, there exist people who occasionally will throw caution to the wind and cause you to take your reputation management to these exterior sites.
First of all, you should follow through on your policies regarding exterior complaints. The disciplinary actions shouldn't be too severe for the first offense, but they should definitely show that you mean business, especially in regard to reputation management. Point systems work well this way.
Try to work things out with the complainer. It may be a legitimate complaint, and it's always best for your reputation management to take the high road. At every step, show that you're willing to work things out rationally. If they persist in the complaint irrationally, you should definitely fire them, and make clear the reasons why. It should certainly be clear in the conversation thread that you were being benevolent. Such is a brief sketch of how to prevent employee complaints.
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