Reputation Management, If Your Customer complains, Will You Know?
United Breaks Guitars (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
With the advent of disruptive media, consumers have more ways than ever to complain about a service or product. The bad news for companies seeking to protect and promote their brand is that the gripes can now take place in the full view of the public eye via social media.
The incident last year of the “United Breaks Guitars” video that musician Dave Carroll wrote and performed is a case in point. Dave Carroll became particularly upset after United Airlines baggage handlers broke his prized guitar. So he recorded a video to protest.
The video promptly went viral, Dave spent the next couple of weeks doing the news and talk show circuit. United, in fairness made more than good, ensuring Dave was compensated. In fairness, the eventual outcome was excellent for both parties. However, anytime people are talking about your company, you would really prefer the conversation to be a positive one.
I don’t think somebodies complaint about your perceived lack of service. Or indeed efficacy of product has a real chance of going viral. Unless of course they wrap it up in an amusing video. However, if they name your Practice and ensure that is tweeted and posted to a couple of other social media sites. You may have a problem when people search for your Practice online.
But would you even know? Or would you find out in time to deal with it in a suitable manner? So how can you protect yourself from an event like this? There are two steps that you can take to monitor the web and Twitter for mentions of your brand. The first which will help you monitor the web is to set up a Google Alert around your brand name. Also ensure that the alert covers variations on your Brand name.
The second step which will monitor Twitter is to use a program like Hootsuite to set up and monitor Twitter searches for your brand. Again, set up searches for variations on your brand name. You will then have to monitor Hootsuite to check if anything comes up. However Google Alerts will be delivered to your inbox, that too is easy to set up.
Of course taking these precautions is only half the battle, you are now monitoring your reputation. What you do when your reputation is impugned is the strategy that takes a lot of thought.
Regards
Geoff
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Rule Number One: Don’t be dishonest on national TV.
Exhibit A: I caught NYC audiologist Dr Shelley Borgia red-handed, as you can see & hear in the video, and read in the transcript, in Less-than-honest NBC Today segment on hearing loss at
http://thehearingblog.com/archives/389
I get about 15-20 hits per week on my blog with her name as the search term; and up until a few weeks ago if you googled her name the post above comes up number one (it’s down to #3 now). What’s more, it’s bulletproof, as it uses her & McDade’s own words to hoist them on their own petard.
Okay Dan, I see where you are coming from here and I know your passion all to well. But did you give the lady a right to reply on this?
In everything in life, there are always two sides to a story.
Geoff, in fact, I have written to Borgia twice, and she has refused to reply. Also, I have a policy of publishing all non-spam comments, even ones that attack me personally.
However, in this case, there are no “two sides” to this story: She represented McDade as having a noise-induced hearing loss from iPod use, when in fact his deafness was from at minimum childhood (if not birth), as his speech production is impaired; and also at 6:20 his admission that he wore hearing aids in grade school.
The dishonesty is right there in plain sight, and plainly heard… And when I published it, the basic response was a low whistle, because it was irrefutable.
Now, please tell me what the “other side of the story” is?!
In fairness when you are dealing with the media, who knows? She could have been told she was there for one thing and they pulled a switch on her? No malice just a better story.
You did your bit though, you gave ample right to reply.