Building Your Business: How to Avoid Bad PR among Your Customers

A number of business missteps that can land you into bad publicity. Some of them might be true while others might be false or exaggerated truths. The customer service may not be up to par, you may slip up on the social media, and anger a section of your customers, your goods may be faulty, of different characteristics than the ones ordered and so forth.

Bad publicity can really cause your business to lose potential opportunities. It can also give rise to increased monitoring by specific government agencies. Here are ways you can avoid bad publicity among your customers:

Let the Customers Know that You Have Their Interest at Heart

In business, you are always building relationships with your customers. You need to grow the friendship and trust among your customers. This inspires loyalty to the brand and generates euphoria of satisfaction among your clients.

When you receive complaints, it is important that you assure your clients of your commitment to resolving the matter at hand. Sometimes, the mistake is not on the business side. However, the assurance that something is being done goes a long way to quell the emotional flare-ups and the resulting fires that it ignites among other customers.

Tell the customers that you are sorry. Keeping quiet implies that you are guilty of the offense for which they are accusing you. On the other hand, being defensive shows that you have already accepted the mistake.

Go out of the Way to Ask for Customer Reviews

Do not wait until there are negative reviews out in the social media or review platforms such as Yelp for you to take action. Seek to know what your customers are thinking about your brand and their experiences from interacting with your brand. You can use such platforms as mobile surveys, surveys on your website or app or embedding a QR code on the receipt, which take the customers to a site where they give their ratings.

Act on the reviews that you get privately from your clients. Most of the time, it takes one customer to post negative reviews of your business for a large number of other dissatisfied customers to show up. However, if you improve the aspects of a poor service, you may as well shore up the positive reviews.

Ensure that You Comply with Regulations

Another source of bad publicity is clampdown of businesses by authorities for not meeting the laid down regulations. Car manufacturers have been forced to recall cars when it is realized that they cheated in being approved for one or many critical parts of particular models. Check the local and federal laws that touch on your business and comply to avoid bringing media to your front door—for wrong reasons of course.

Provide Information

Sometimes the customers give bad reviews to a product or business for the lack of proper information. They may not know how to use a given product, store, or integrate it with the preferred activities. Invest in video and text guides, offer after sale service and follow up to ensure that the clients indeed got value from your solutions. In addition, provide information about the business.

In the case of the purported ACN scam, most people enrolled in the company were not adequately trained and did not know how the company works and how they would benefits. Therefore, when they failed to get the promised returns, they labeled the firm a scam. The same can happen to any business when the clients have limited information.

Good PR will open the company doors to bigger markets and repeat business. Always be proactive in ensuring the customers are well informed, satisfied. Moreover, make them feel that you care for their well-being.