With all the good the Internet has brought to both businesses and customers, it also has opened a can of worms that is not too easy to close.
Take the following example:
A customer comes to your restaurant with their significant other for a special evening of fine dining and relaxation. Their waiter/waitress is running behind and is late getting them their orders. When the food does arrive, it is not what they ordered and/or is cold. The restaurant is real noisy and the couple, the ones that were planning on a peaceful dining experience, ends up feeling like they just spent an hour or two at a food court in a busy airport. When all is said and done, they leave your restaurant and havenât even left a decent tip. Think you will never hear from them again?
In all likelihood, while you may never see them in person again, there is a very good chance you will hear from them, as will countless others.
Internet Has Changed the Ways We Do Business
You see, the âold daysâ likely meant that you may get a letter in the mail regarding the service, but not much more than that. Okay, while it is never good business to lose a customer or two, losing a few here and there is to be expected.
But wait, what if you now lose hundreds of potential customers because of this one bad experience the couple had? Donât think it can happen? Well, think again.
After that couple left your eatery the other night, one or both of them took to the Internet and told anyone who would listen about what a bad experience they had at your restaurant. Now, instead of maybe just their family and friends knowing about it, potentially hundreds and even thousands will hear their complaints.
Negative publicity regarding your business is certainly not a positive thing, but do you automatically have to react or does doing so actually open you up to more trouble?
First and foremost determine why the negative publicity originated:
- Was the customerâs bad experience something that could have been prevented or were you not even aware of it until the fallout?
- Is it a constructive comment or something that seems personal from a customer youâve had issues with in the past?
- Has this customerâs bad experience been something new to your business or is this becoming an unwanted trend (other customers too) as of late?
- If you have dealt with a similar issue before, what was the outcome?
When it comes to dealing with bad publicity, the advent of the Internet years back has meant business owners now can be dealt a major blow with just a few sentences being banged out on a keyboard.
What once used to be bad publicity spread through word of mouth from one upset customer to maybe a handful of people can now be passed around like a viral wildfire by one click of a mouse. In just minutes, thousands of people can read a bad review of your business and form negative views of it in the process.
If your business believes that bad publicity is better than no publicity at all, then by all means stand back and take your chances. Chances are, however, that many companies donât feel that way and will take a stand to deal with the matter.
If negative publicity links regarding your business seem to be spreading like wildfire, the best way to eliminate them is by using the correct SEO techniques.
Do You Know and Understand Your Online Reputation?
A positive step is hiring an expert who handles online reputation rebuilding so they can start the cleansing process of removing bad publicity links.
The individual/company you hire to rebuild your companyâs reputation can simply demote bad post ranking sites from search engines such as Google, promoting positive posts for the rankings instead. The information is likely still to be on the Internet, but those researching will have a major dig on their hands.
In the event comments are left on your site via a forum or on your companyâs Facebook page, it is important that you have already have in place a reader comments policy so customers know the rules up front. Not only does this protect you legally, but it also keeps your reputation in tact that you can take the heat and address the issues at heart. For those customers who leave constructive comments (not involving vulgarity, etc.), by all means leave them up, as censoring them is going to draw the ire of not only the original poster, but likely others.
Business owners can ignore the remarks and let them hopefully die or take them on and deal with those consequences.
The bottom line is trying to determine the potential impact from the comment or comments and how they can impact your wallet.
So, has your business been saddled with negative online comments in the past? If so, what did you do about them?
Photo credit: neighborhoods.redeyechicago.com
Dave Thomas writes extensively for Business.com, an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.
