Your brand’s reputation is the key to achieving overall business growth. The reputation of your brand is very fragile, especially in the digital world where news—whether true or not—travels in the speed of light. You can lose your reputation, the one thing you’ve developed and protected all these years, because of a bad meme or a viral video gone wrong. But do you know that Lakeland public relations have the power to smoothen things over and turn this bad thing into something positive?
Assess Your Reputation
Identify the problems first. What was the initial reaction of the market to the product before they found out it was defective, for example? Did they love it? If they did, then that means there is merit to the product only that the quality, which can be easily remedied, had problems.
Google your brand to see what people are saying. Don’t rely on social media alone. Check your company’s ratings to really see how this issue affected your brand.
Admit the Mistake and Apologize
The best way to retain customers is to simply apologize. Customers hate nothing more than a company trying to pin the blame on someone else or simply shrugging off the problem as if nothing happened.
If you can admit that there was something wrong with the production and your company is doing all it can to address the situation, you may find a forgiving public.
Address Customers’ Complaints
After you have apologized, it’s not time to face the music and that means actually answering your customers’ complaints, providing feedback on what will happen to the products they availed from your company but are not defective and unusable.
Give them a clear path to what steps to take to return and replace the products. Also, allow them a full refund if that’s what it takes to earn their trust back and build up your credibility.
Encourage Customer Testimonials
Tap into your local customer base. Allow them to leave testimonials and reviews on your website or Facebook profile to let other potential customers know you are still the real deal. Be careful about making these reviews look fabricated.
Your customers will know if you are trying to hoodwink them. Let these stories speak about the quality of the products and services you provide. It’ll also be great if you can have a blog site to answer the comments left by your customers.
