7 Ways You Could Damage Your Company’s Reputation

Consumers place a great deal of trust in a brand when they buy their products and services. Unfortunately, there are numerous obstacles a company could encounter that could potentially destroy a brand’s credibility, which could lead to a considerable loss of custom.

To ensure your organization maintains a positive image in an industry, read the seven ways you could potentially damage your company’s reputation.

1.   Lying to Clients

As stated, trust is the most important element in a company’s reputation. If you choose to lie to a client regarding their data or attempt to hide a mistake, they could perceive your business as deceptive and untrustworthy. As a result, they will be more likely to abandon your organization, and it could lead to negative word of mouth about your brand, which can destroy your reputation across an industry.

In fact, according to recent research, an organization with a lying CEO will take an average of five years to recover from the event, even if the business has terminated the deceptive member of staff.

For this reason, you must never lie about a mistake or attempt to blame others for your company’s shortcomings, as an exposed lie could damage your reputation in a matter of minutes. Customers value honesty, which is why you must aim to develop a transparent business and apologize for any mistakes you make along the way.

2.   A Data Breach

Hackers are making it their mission to gain access to an organization’s financial details, trade secrets, and consumer information, and are embarking on a variety of innovative tactics to gain access to your network and devices. Unfortunately, a data breach cannot only lead to operational issues, financial loss, and legal consequences, but it can become a PR nightmare.

By failing to protect your customers and employees’ data, this will indicate you have failed to take the steps to improve your cybersecurity. Consequently, it could lead to your customers fleeing your brand and investing in your more secure competitors’ products or services.

While it is essential to introduce the finest firewalls, anti-virus programs, and encryption into your business, you must also protect your company from internal threats. For example, you must find out how to avoid a potential data breach by introducing privileged data management.

3.   Poor Customer Service

As your customers are the lifeblood of your business, you must actively care for their individual needs each day, which can maintain their brand loyalty and satisfaction. Sadly, many organizations make the mistake of neglecting the customer service experience, as they might:

• Fail to reply to their customers’ emails quickly
• Care more about acquiring new customers than retaining existing ones
• Refuse product or service refunds
• Force customers to endure various steps and processes to resolve an issue
• Provide unprofessional or poorly trained customer service representatives

Many brands are guilty of the above issues, which can slowly but surely destroy their image. To ensure you never disappoint a customer, you must take the steps to improve the customer experience, which means effectively training your team, dealing with issues and questions in a timely manner, and making your customers feel valued.

4.   Discussing Sensitive Topics

Discussing sensitive topics, such as religion, politics, or race, could potentially destroy your brand. Unless the topics are at the heart of your business, you must avoid complex issues as much as possible.

Always avoid posting insensitive remarks or opinions, which could potentially go viral and lead to a PR disaster that will shine your company in a poor light. Unless you are happy to receive negative press attention and alienate your current and potential customers, it is important your brand is not connected with a CEO’s or an employee’s personal views, which could lead to outrage and a loss of custom.

5.   Failing to Create a Social Media Policy

Your employees will serve as your brand ambassadors online. A negative social media status or photograph regarding your company on their personal profiles could potentially destroy your reputation.

To protect your brand’s image at all times, you must develop a strict social media policy, which your staff will be required to adhere to. For example, you could instruct that they cannot take photographs inside of the workplace or post negative comments regarding your brand.

6.   A Poor Company Culture and Working Environment

A poor working environment and company culture cannot only force your best staff to hand in their notice, but it could lead to a bad reputation in your industry. If the news of a toxic environment leaks out, it could prevent you from securing top talent in the future, who could have helped your business to enjoy a superb profit margin, and it might have a serious impact on your annual sales.

7.   Ethical Problems

Any organization that wants to maintain a positive reputation must have a strong set of ethics. It is vital to be aware that one employee’s negative behavior can affect the entire business. For example, news of a member of staff’s illegal activity could hit the headlines, especially if you run a large, well-known brand.

Consequently, partners might want to distance themselves from your organization, clients might cancel contracts, and shares to your company could potentially plummet.

It is, therefore, crucial to deter all employees from breaking the law, which means warning them of the repercussions of fraud, theft, or data leakage. You also must take action against any individual who embarks on illegal activity, such as immediate dismissal and legal proceedings.

Conclusion

Your company’s reputation is not only reflected in the quality of your products and services, but it is represented in your brand’s ethics and conduct each day.

For your brand to enjoy a superb annual profit margin and longevity in an industry, you must routinely attempt to safeguard your reputation every day, which means effectively protecting your data, caring for your customers and maintaining your professionalism. If you don’t, it could lead to a lack of trust in your brand and a loss of custom, and the damage caused could be irreparable.