Withstanding A Business Reputational Knock & Becoming Stronger For It
Any business, like any person, can fail to meet their duties or responsibilities at some point or another. When this happens, we learn that trust and prestige can take years to build, but minutes to lose. Either way, that doesn’t mean a reputational knock is irreparable, and sometimes, you can subvert most of the damage by implementing a healthy response that shows your true value allocations.
This takes more than just a click of the fingers. It takes time, planning, care and the right messaging. It’s also important to be very impartial about the issue you’ve suffered, and move forward with nothing but resolution in sight. In other words, a response needs to be strategic, and ignoring the source of the issue can be one of the worst things you’ve ever done.
With that in mind, let’s consider how you could achieve such a helpful end result.
Addressing Issues Head-On
Ultimately, letting an issue fester can only cause the narrative to spin out of control and cause even more untold damage. For example, let’s say that an incident between one of your workers and a customer has been recorded, and the video has gone viral. Instead of quietly letting the worker go while social media is in an uproar, it can be important to release a statement about the situation, how it doesn’t align with your values, how you’ve terminated the worker effective immediately, and how you’ll be seeking to rectify the situation.
Of course, make certain that you have legal advice to hand and be careful to just how much culpability you accept, sometimes a direct apology may be seen as accepting direct guilt, instead of framing the actions of one individual on one individual. Either way, the issue must be addressed head-on.
Direct Feedback Where You Can
Gaining a small amount of control over where the feedback is directed can help you better sort through it, and also understand more direct and robust complaints over social media noise. For example, you might set up a custom email address where customers can send in a picture of a purchase receipt and receive a full refund for a product that may have disappointed them.
You can also set up a web page dedicated to those users you need to restore trust with. When feedback is directed, you have a much better chance of responding to it correctly, at least those who are seriously looking for a constructive response outside of scoring points on a brand.
Restructure & Relaunch Your Approach
In the late 2000’s, Domino's Pizza relaunched their pizza line with a stunningly frank advertisement campaign - they admitted that the quality of their pizzas had sunk in recent years, and they were here with a brand new campaign to fix it. This involved better doughs, a restructuring of how their kitchen line worked, and fresher ingredients.
Your own reputational knock may also inspire a similar response that helps you relaunch to better goodwill. For example, if you were selling a healthcare supplement in the form of a powder that was unpleasant to take and oversold in its quantities, you might revivify your formula and use private label supplement manufacturing companies to offer the best quality capsule possible. Reinvest in new packaging, and you’ve become a new presence on the shelf. The buzz around a fixed problem or a relaunched item can help overlook some of the fallings of before, and it will be due to your hard work that any success is found.
Rebuilding Trust
Ultimately, rebuilding trust is a long road and you can’t expect overnight results. However, when you take the time to restructure your priorities, let your work do the talking, reformat any issues that cause the problem in the first place, and move forward into the future, it’s true that time can forget all but the most egregious issues.
Moreover, it’s important to see this knock as an opportunity more than a struggle. This is because most people look to a redemption story with much more favorability than they ever would if you had never placed a foot wrong. Rebuilding trust means investing in your audience, ensuring you go the extra mile, taking steps towards goodwill, and not letting this tough experience prevent you from pursuing opportunities laden with risk again. This crucible can often teach you more about business than you may ever have learned even after fifteen years operating adequately in the trade.
With this advice, you’ll be sure to withstand that reputational knock, and come out better on the other side.
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Withstanding A Business Reputational Knock & Becoming Stronger For It
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