5 Vital Quotes: Brand Reputation as Your Greatest Weapon (Not Your Biggest Fear)

With all that is uncertain in life, why do we spend so much time fearing the things that are largely within our control?

Year after year, students stress over standardized tests, worrying that poor performance on exams like the AP and LSAT will forever damage their future. While it is hard to fault students for worrying about the stakes, it is incredibly difficult to understand why failure is even a remote possibility. Students have months—if not years—to prepare for these exams, and thousands of books, websites and tutorial courses exist to arm students with everything they need to succeed.

No, they will not get an answer key for the specific questions on the exam, but they have every opportunity to arrive on test date with complete knowledge about how to analyze and address anything put in front of them.

The same phenomenon exists when it comes to brands’ reputation management on social media. Countless organizations approach the rise of public customer communication from a fear standpoint—our reputation will be ruined if a customer discusses our poor customer service on Twitter—forgetting that the organization retains complete control over what discourse goes viral.

As long as brands structure their organization to deliver an elite customer experience and respond appropriately when minor imperfections do arise, customers will have little negative to say and will instead focus on sharing their positive interactions with the business.

What is often viewed as a great business fear should instead be perceived as an even greater business opportunity.

Ahead of his presentation at the first-annual Reputation Management Conference, Eric Bryn, vice president of digital innovation at Baird Warner, sat down with Call Center IQ to reveal how businesses can seize the reputational opportunity created by social.

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Instead of stressing over the awful things disgruntled customers might say on social, here are five points of wisdom for assuring social customer discourse will serve to strengthen the brand reputation.

Social as a reputational strength, not a weakness

"It’s a very public forum, so it’s not inconceivable for the [disappointed] customer to say, ‘hey, why don’t you be a little bit more honest with me?’

At the end of the day, consumers understand that mistakes can happen. It’s how you respond to [them] and how publicly and honestly you have a conversation around fixing that mistake that saves the day, especially from a social channel."

Managing reputation across different channels with different service expectations

"The key is…it’s how do you respond to these channels recognizing what the nuances of each channel demand.

You have to understand the ecosystem of each of the channels. Then setup a series of response mechanisms. You have to have training around the concept of what does it mean to offer customer service in [each] social environment."

Aligning the business to protect the brand

"The core departments that have to be involved should be marketing, PR, product development, customer service, sales, IT [legal and human resources]. Aligning the key stakeholders from each of these departments is key to a holistic approach.

Map out how social affects each business unit as an opportunity as a risk. Once you map that out, you can see how you would use the social channel for each business unit to drive whatever you want done for each brand. Then you just craft appropriate guidelines—or policies—to reinforce your company’s position. You have to train to these guidelines or policies, and you have to assure compliance with the policies.

Once you [begin to establish alignment with other business units], it’s really about getting the senior executive team that would look at this alignment process and getting them to buy in as well. It requires a bit of investment, of structural change—how can we sell the concept that social is important to brand?"

Assuring your individual employees protect the brand reputation

What are your core values? And does your brand identity align with these core values?

Generally, you are going to have [employees] that have to engage in this social channel. What are the one or two unifying themes or mantras that roll up to this identity? These mantras operate as rallying points that you can spread freely throughout your organization. Then you train to these mantras and value and identity, and then you have to let your team execute with clear expectations about how their conduct supports your brand and core values. Then you have to have systems in place so you can manage the experiences of the customer. Your employees can use these systems to deliver that exceedingly excellent experience.

At the end of the day, [employees] want to be happy with what they’re doing. And if they’re happy with what they’re doing, they can deliver on the promise."

Managing the impact of business partners on your own brand’s reputation

"It puts a lot of pressure on brands to think about who they are contracting with. Some of these, you have grandfather issues and long-term contracts, but at the end of the day, you are only as strong as your weakest link. Part of this transparency, this brand reputation that social has affected positively and negatively, has put pressure on brands to take a look at where potential problems exist.

Assuming you can’t just cut and paste your providers, it’s about how you are going to engage that provider to deliver on the promise that they are making to you that ultimately affects the promise you are making to your customers."