When the stakes are high…….| Stakeholder Management

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Reputation management is critical to business interest. Customer experience is THE differentiator in moving the needles. Ensure the user experience in the superlative, lest your business interest would be superseded. Bad user experience is more than a frown. It can beat your bottom-line so hard to mark it purple and bleed crimson. You don’t need others to wreck your image: your action or inaction will do the damage, sometimes beyond repair.

Googled is an acceptable word today replacing ‘searched’. Adults to kids are aware and very much convinced that the search engine has an answer for every query posed. Remarkable, more than a search engine, it becomes kind of a genie ‘to fetch the answer at your beck and call’. It’s no more an illusion of the Alibaba ‘open sesame’. But every tidbit pooled and served as ‘information’ – whether phony or perfect, anything on the net leaves a digital imprint. So it is imperative to be on your toes when it comes to customer service –regardless of the domain or industry as a customer is a customer. In as many languages possible. Period.

What rattles a service provider – it’s the review. For 100 positive review, it just takes one nasty one to make you feel so negative. Like a pin-prick to a blown-up balloon. Why? Is it because bade vibes spread fast and leaves distaste? From your personal experience, check out how many time you have searched for ‘any negative comments’. Because we tend to believe others’ experience. Because we lend credibility to the bitter cry of wrong customer, without even validating the statement, assuming everything typed by an individual is true to the last letter. Because we are too lenient to offer ‘the customer’s experience the benefit of doubt’ rather than question the authenticity of the statement.

If one cares to notice, more than ever new business boom big with growing interest and alarming consumption of the internet that people’s lives are impacted by internet, Google and social media – which seem inevitable and indispensable. Gone is a single day without a shy at the social media and as consumers, our appetite is insatiable. Our hunger to know is fuelled all the more. Our thirst for knowledge is never quenched. It’s for the good? No one is competent to address that poser, but admittedly inadequate to come out with a convincing answer.

When business depends on the customer, then make sure the deal is fair, engagement positive and memories pleasant, else it will boomerang and knock you out of your senses. For the best brand out there, their best ambassador is the customer. The unofficial spokesperson. Any word spoken out of place from that spokesperson can erode your company’s credibility.

We weigh in too much about the personal experience and too much reliance on anecdotes, which can be figment of imagination or statement of exaggeration or just someone settling scores. Words can be far from the truth, but who validates before your reputation is already in ruins.