Identifying, Managing and Resolving Your Online and In-house Reputation
We looked at the astounding amount of consumers who regularly use online reviews to make their purchasing decisions in Part 1 of this blog, and in Part 2, we shared why employers should embrace the opportunity to receive organic feedback via social media channels.
In this final installment of Instantaneous Critics, I will share 3 tips to help you identify, manage and resolve our online and in-house reputation.
Identify:
- Google your company name. See what is currently being said about your organization on various social media sites.
- Monitor Yelp and TripAdvisor.
- Monitor the chatter via products like Tweetreach or GuestPulse to find out what conversations are going on right now on Twitter about your brand.
Manage:
- Take care of your customers and provide a positive guest experience in all that your organization offers.
- Assign someone from your company the crucial responsibility of daily monitoring of social media. Spend time daily on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Industry-specific sites and Blogs, etc.) and address comments immediately. Respond to every online complaint.
- Develop online relationships with your customers.
Resolve:
- Commit to recognizing on a timely basis, the complaint (or accolade). Procrastination is a kiss of death if you ignore or fail to respond/resolve issues raised by your customer.
- Respond publically via social media versus privately through email or letter. If you respond privately instead of publically, customers are going to only see the complaints and not the resolutions!
- Don’t be afraid to post your inadequacies in public, but do have a resolution process in place.
Social media has given a voice to the customer, and has empowered the customer in ways never seen before. The Hospitality industry can no longer dismiss social media as a passing fancy, rather a powerful tool to understand how the customer perceives your brand, service and consumer’s rating compared to your competition More importantly, social media allows your organization to get on the radar of the consumer for little or no capital.
Jan M. Smith is the Founder and Principal of Inland Management Group, a Human Resource Consultancy located in Temecula, specializing in the Hospitality and Service industry. You can contact Jan at (951) 302-6483, www.inlandmgtgroup.com, email at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at Temecula_HR, and become a Fan on Facebook
