When it comes to long-term success in the business world, your reputation is everything. After all, your reputation (good or bad) will be reflected in consumer trust levels. If customers feel as though they cannot trust your brand, they’ll be unlikely to invest in your products and services. This, in turn, will impact your bottom line and could mean that you struggle to keep your company afloat moving forward.
While you cannot make your business immune to criticism entirely (it’s impossible to please everyone), there are certain steps you can take to protect your reputation. For example, you could:
- Work on being more sustainable.
- Maintain strong health and safety standards.
- Hold yourself accountable.
Work on being more sustainable.
Over the past few years, there’s been a real shift in terms of what customers expect from the businesses they support. For example, a recent study found that:
- 78% of consumers feel that sustainability is important.
- 84% of customers feel as though poor environmental practices will alienate them from a brand.
This means that companies that aren’t taking the steps to “go green” are likely to face reputational damage, especially when we’re constantly reminded about the dangers of failing to do so on the news and social media. As such, now is the perfect time to make your business more sustainable, whether that’s through
reducing your carbon footprint or upgrading your packaging – both of which come with the added benefit of enhancing customer happiness.
Maintain strong health and safety standards.
Poor workplace health and safety standards and procedures could also lead to your reputation taking a hit. For example, poor polices could heavily impact your employee retention rates, especially if someone is injured as a result of this negligence. Continuous staff turnover will, over time, also impact the quality of services you offer, disappointing your customers too.
Fortunately, there are many ways in which you can improve health and safety within the workplace. For example, if you run a research lab, you should ensure that all products are sourced from reliable vendors. This means that products such as Bromantane should be sourced from reputable buyers and that they are always third-party tested.
Hold yourself accountable!
While a negative review can be incredibly disheartening, it does not have to mark the beginning of the end for your business. Instead, view it as an opportunity to make things right. For example, by responding to the review, apologizing and offering a solution, you can repair your relationship with the customer. If they had not left the review, to begin with, this would have been impossible, and it could mean that you are able to retain their custom moving forward.
Furthermore, by responding to negative reviews, you can also work to prevent reputational damage. After all, this shows that you are willing to hold yourself accountable when you’ve made a mistake, something which many customers will appreciate. In fact, a recent study found that 57% of customers will not purchase products from businesses that ignore negative reviews.
