Managing business reputation

As Benjamin Franklin, US Founding Father, once said, “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.”

Fast-forward nearly 300 years, and in the spotlight of social media, a good reputation has never been more valuable — especially when it comes to business. One bad review, data breach or bad hire and all of a sudden, what you’ve worked so hard for can go up in smoke.

Your customers, partners, investors, suppliers and staff have access to platforms to write scathing reviews or expose inefficiencies and scandals at the click of a button. So in this digital age, how do you keep out of the firing line?

Why your reputation matters

Being a business owner today is like being under the microscope. Everything you do will be scrutinised — we’re living in the age of transparency, one that is not always clear on the truth or the whole picture.

Whatever your business does or sells, the glue that holds it together is trust. Without it, you don’t have customers. A negative public perception can derail years of hard work and progress, and this is why your reputation is so important.

Earlier this year, we surveyed 500 tech founders and CFOs and found that more than one in four (27.6%) startups and scaleups have experienced a reputational challenge or PR crisis in the last year*.

Your reputation is what gets you customers. More importantly, it’s what keeps them coming back. It’s also how you hire the best talent and attract interest from investors or partners. So when we talk about reputation, we talk about trust.

To keep this trust intact, there are two crucial things you’ll need to consider: reputation management and crisis management. While they’re closely related, they serve very different purposes.

What is reputation management?

Reputation management is a long-term strategy that is built up gradually over time. It comes down to proactively monitoring and influencing what is being said about your brand.

Just like a person's reputation can be fragile, so too can a company’s. It’s important to handle it with care and attention, nurturing it so it supports you rather than harms you.

Responding to customer feedback — both good and bad — is a great starting point. It also helps to monitor conversations on social media, engage with people and develop your customer communications so they feel on point and show customers that you value what they think.

The way your brand speaks is going to be really important here. How you welcome a new customer is going to be different to the tone you use when they’re experiencing a problem, so developing a robust tone of voice can do wonders in building trust and managing your reputation.

Build yourself a communications strategy that considers all the ways your customers need to be spoken to. Develop a brand voice and use it to put yourself out there.

Reputation management is the thing that’s going to support your business if a crisis hits.

What is crisis management?

Crisis management is the plan you have in place when something goes wrong. It’s short, sharp and reactive. From bad press to an M&S-style data breach, this is what sets you back on the straight and narrow, and shows the world you’ve got things under control.

When something goes wrong, your initial reaction could be to issue an immediate press release distancing your company from the crisis. Instead, it’s better to pause, reflect and then respond. What is a crisis right now may not actually be one in a few days.

Unless someone’s life is in immediate danger, give yourself 24 hours. Use this time to thoroughly investigate the situation and understand who it affects and how. Then you should come up with a resolution or possible responses, communicating effectively.

There are many crisis management frameworks to pick from, allowing you to find the one that best suits your ways of working.

Tools to manage your reputation

There are several things you can do to keep your reputation in tip-top health. From a proactive communications strategy for your reputation management, to appointing a crisis management team for when things go awry.

As we’ve covered, your company’s reputation is built on trust with your customers. One way you can shape your reputation is by collecting reviews and testimonials from real customers on sites like Trustpilot, Google Reviews and Yelp. Social proof is also a great way to get your name out there to new customers.

Automated emails can be sent out for feedback once contracts have been signed and sent, and if you have a customer service team, they can ask for reviews directly.

You might also want to consider capturing performance metrics like your Net Promoter Scores (NPS) and customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores. These can be great internal metrics giving you a clear view of your customers’ experience, but can also be useful when you’re looking to develop partnerships or are looking for investment.

For recruitment, consider Glassdoor. Here, both current and former staff can leave reviews anonymously, allowing future employees to understand what the company culture is like.

With all of these sites, however, it’s important to respond to both positive and negative reviews. Team up with your marketing team or PR lead to ensure consistent messaging and communication across the platforms.

There are, of course, some downsides to using review sites. If your service levels drop or your customers are frustrated, you’ll likely get poor reviews. But transparency builds trust and — as they say — feedback is a gift, as it allows you to build and get stronger.

Finally, you might want to consider professional indemnity insurance (PI), which can help cover legal costs if you’re accused of negligence. Also called errors and omissions insurance, PI is designed to cover your business from claims linked to mistakes in your services, contract disputes or intellectual property issues.

While it doesn’t directly cover reputational harm or revenue lost because of reputational damage, some policies include support for PR and crisis management if your work harms a client’s reputation and they sue. It can also step in for defamation or confidentiality breaches.

Last but not least

If you want more valuable advice like this for your scaling business, download Risk and success: the startups and scaleup edition.

Enclosed, you’ll find over 350 pages of high-impact guidance, including:

• Key mitigation strategies for building resilient businesses
• Research from 500 founders, CFOs and C-suite tech executives
• Extensive insights from industry experts

*Superscript surveyed 500 tech founders, directors and c-suites across Wales and England via Attest