It's a reality that online critiques of products and companies exist, and have for a long while. Some companies have begun keeping an eye on their name in the search engines, and justifiably so. You can never be too sure when or if a negative review of your business will hit the first page. If you are caught unaware, or don't do anything about it, this could be disastrous for your business. Welcome to reputation management.
It's unfortunate, but you can expect that not everyone is going to be impressed or satisfied with your service or your product. Dissatisfied customers (or even worse, employees) may or may not post a negative review of your business online. You may also be a victim of slander by your competition. Part of reputation management is being able to identify which is which.
Depending on whether it's an actual customer or employee, or if it's mudslinging by your competitors, you should adjust your reputation management approach. All three will require different handling. Ideally, you should already have a system in place to deal with some of these issues, especially if it's an employee.
All three types of negative review should be dealt with the same way at first. It's in your best interest with reputation management that you come out looking like the better person. So your initial approach should be non-hostile and willing to work out the problem. From here, there are some differences in how you handle the situation.
With customers, you should try to be benevolent as much as possible throughout the exchange, unless they become unreasonable. Reputation management with them will mostly involve a replacement service and maybe some bonuses to smooth things over. If they're reasonable, you can come out with a win-win situation.
Employee complaints can be a bit trickier if you aren't already prepared for them. Ideally, you should already have a complaint system with clear policies and procedures in place. This should also include penalties for taking complaints outside of the system. If you don't have it there already, reputation management can follow more or less the same form as for customers, but you will be less likely to have a win-win situation.
False complaints or libelous ones from your competition are a completely different matter. Unreasonable customers can also tend to go this way. After determining that they are determined to tarnish your reputation, you will have to play hard ball with your reputation management.
First, after failing in the interaction phase, you need to talk to the web page's owner. Explain to them the situation and ask them to remove the review. If they refuse, it's time to take reputation management to the legal system. Often the mere threat of it will move most web page owners.
This, however, isn't enough. While the matter is being fought out in court, the review is still up on the web page. It now becomes your task in reputation management to "bury" the review.
Author Resource:-
Search engine marketing is the most powerful way to drive traffic on the web. With Content Syndication you can control your internet brand. For more info on reputation management go to www.directhorizon.com
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.freebie-articles.com/images/rss.gif "XML Feed For RSS")
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites