Last week I discovered some very interesting responses to a survey I had asked about 60 employees to fill out regarding their business’s online reputation. Although I had suspected that many of them had a lot to improve, these responses were lower than I expected.
I asked them to rate their business on a scale of 1-5 (5 being the best) on the following questions.
- Your business’s internal process regarding your online reputation
- The execution of this process.
- Upper Management’s understanding of reviews and the current amount of review online.
- The customer service training that goes on in the business.
I averaged out the scores and here are the results.
- Business’s process: 2.3
- Execution of Process: 1.6
- Knowledge of Reviews: 2.8
- Customer Service Training: 2.6
It is not surprising that the highest score is for understanding the NEED for reviews and a good online reputation. On the other side, it is not surprising that the lowest score was for execution.
These results demonstrate that getting started is the hardest thing for businesses to embrace.
So what can they do to begin creating their online reputation?
Before you focus online, focus on-site. Choose the level of customer service you want to deliver to your customers. One word of warning is that you cannot be everything to everyone. That is a losing strategy. Pick one or two things you want your customers to say or write about your business.
Example:
“They are prompt and very pleasant to deal with.”
Now you have to create the behavior in your team to deliver these results.
How can you deliver promptness?
- All phones must be answered within 3 rings.
- All emails must be responded to within 2 hours.
- Customers must be greeted as soon as they come in.
The list goes on but the point is you are educating your team on what SPECIFIC behavior is now expected. It makes it easier for management to follow up and there are no miss-understandings on what is expected.
Each week review your online reputation. Have someone on your team document all of the review sites you care to follow to see if the number of reviews increase as well as the quality. When you start to see the customers mentioning what you are focusing on (promptness and pleasant) then you can add on another focus point of customer service you want to deliver.
This is the first step to building an environment that encourages the whole staff to be involved with delivering excellent customer service, hence building your online reputation.
I used to teach computer programming, and we preached the gospel of stepwise refinement. Today they call it “agile”, but the concept is the same: take a small bite at the apple before moving on.
I like your ideas here, which say “what can we do right away?” to improve the customer experience. The next steps are equally as important. Metrics? Yes! How do you know you’re doing those things you said you’d do? And after that? Tackle another area that makes your customers’ experience better? Using small steps, perhaps you CAN be all things to *most* people (there will always be the eternally unsatisfied…).
I saw a post last week that said in today’s market, you can be “average” and kill your competition. It’s funny to see it stated that way, but it’s true. We’re getting to the (low) point that doing SOMETHING positive about customer relationships is noteworthy…