Brand Reputation Management (BRM) is a mixture of public relations and word-of-mouth marketing, as it combines the customer feedback trail and your own marketing techniques.
Social media is both a new and large part of the client feedback process for BRM, which offers up some new challenges and opportunities for companies.
Actively managing these channels of feedback is a large part of successful BRM, and it can all start with the customer experience in store.
A school of thought introduced by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore have said that we live in an 'experience economy', which is the interaction after which any individual or community will take action. It can't be bought and it can't be faked.
A recent article from public relations website marketingprofs.com suggests a good course of defense as well as a strong attack strategy to deal with the new face of BRM.
In a list of seven suggestions on how to do this, including points about improving your search engine dominance, brand monitoring and social media PR, the website recommends taking customer service and culture seriously, which is where customer satisfaction surveys could make all the difference.
The site suggests that since every interaction with a customer is potentially being evaluated, targets for staff could be introduced to actively champion the importance of keeping the client happy.
Another of the website's tips helps deal with negative PR. The site reports that while negative feedback can be common, what matters is how you deal with it.
Brand management and marketing website socialmediatoday.com said that any interaction on social media sites take "humility, authenticity and courage" to be open to talking about opposing views such as negative feedback in order to make any progress with your branding.
This highlights the need for feedback to be as in-depth as possible so that you can take appropriate action to remedy the situation before it becomes a bigger issue.
Asking the right customer survey questions will lead to the kind of response you need to make necessary changes to your customer service plans.
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