Managing Your Reputation Online: Part I
July 19, 2007When you hear the word “reputation,” you’re likely to think back to your high school days. The labels flew freely: geek, jock, nerd, freak, prep, and a few that are substantially less flattering. The good news is that you’re not in high school anymore. The bad news is you own or work for a company, and that company has a reputation – and a label – just like you did in high school. But what is your company’s label? Is it good, or is it one of the less flattering ones?
Are you trustworthy, great to deal with, fun, honest; or have you been slammed as a scam, rip off, or worthless?
eBay has been rated as one of the most trusted companies in the world, despite the fact that on eBay you are actually dealing with other individuals, not eBay directly. How did eBay get labeled as a highly trusted site when consumers don’t even deal with them directly? It’s called reputation management, and it’s something that eBay excels at.
Interestingly enough, eBay has provided some reputation management tools that are utilized by the community. The obvious one is the feedback system which allows trading partners to rate each other. On eBay, one’s feedback rating is a vital part of their eBay reputation. There are essentially two types of feedback that can be given on eBay: positive and negative. Receiving a positive feedback improves one’s reputation, while receiving a negative reduces it.
Reputation management can easily get to be a dirty business. Without even realizing it, eBay’s members manage their reputations by attempting to control the type of feedback they receive. This is most often done through the use of “feedback extortion”. That is, one of the trading partners (usually the seller) will withhold giving feedback until they’ve received positive feedback from the other party.
Similar equivalents can be found with other businesses. Customer testimonials are helpful in building a positive reputation. However, some companies actively seek testimonials from consumers by offering them free items or services, offering discounts, or promising to resolve an undesirable situation quickly.
Businesses who work together will also often exchange positive testimonials, even if they don’t actually like each other. This is done to prevent the other company from doing or saying anything to damage the other’s reputation.
Retail websites have several feedback options available to them that are very similar to the system used by eBay for its members. By submitting your site to review sites and shopping comparison sites, your customers will have to the opportunity to rate their experience with you.
Most sites use a rating scale, rather than the more ambiguous positive/negative system used by eBay.
Here’s a list of some of the more popular review sites:
To improve your reputation on these review sites, you’ll need to get your customers to give you positive ratings at each site. Studies show that about 29% of your customers will be willing to submit a review of your site, so long as you ask them.
You have some control over your reputation in this matter. By waiting until a transaction is completed and waiting until your customer has received the item(s) they ordered, you can gauge the likelihood that they will leave you a positive review. A customer who returns an item, for example, might not be a good person to ask to review your site.
Customers in some industries are a bit more passionate about submitting reviews than others. Computer hardware, for example, seems to get a large number of customer reviews even without the company asking for them. What this means to you is that if you are in one of these industries, you won’t necessarily need to ask your customers for reviews. It does mean, however, that you had better take excellent care of them!
Jewelry customers on the other seem to not leave reviews very often. This probably has something to do with the regularity that a person shops for these items. Computer hardware outdates very quickly, resulting in customers who buy new hardware several times a year, whereas jewelry is a rare purchase.
Soliciting reviews from your customers is just one of many methods to manage your online reputation. In the coming weeks, we’ll discuss the many other factors involved with reputation management.
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