Your online reputation is your business’s most valuable asset, and managing it can be a daunting task. Social media platforms such as Twitter see constant brand mentions from customers to the brand. Most of them easily air out grievances since they are looking for instant reply and on the spot brand support. This proves that, customers have more power than ever to influence your online reputation over the internet. Hence it is important to understand Online Reputation Management (ORM) and how customer surveys can help improve it. In this blog post, we will understand ORM and discuss the benefits of using customer surveys as a tool for improving your brand’s online reputation.
What is Online Reputation Management?
Brands want to stand out in this competitive market. Multiple negative reviews and bad media attention could influence their standing in the space. Brands are also competing with perception races and how they can continue maintaining their positive reviews streak for years in a row.
Online reputation management refers to the practice of monitoring and influencing how your brand is perceived online. An effective online reputation management strategy involves regularly monitoring and responding to customer feedback, as well as implementing measures to improve customer satisfaction.
Why Online Reputation Management Matters for Your Business?
Negative search results and bad reviews on social media posts can harm your brand image and deter potential customers, ultimately impacting your online presence. Conversely, a robust online reputation management strategy can help you attract and retain customers by establishing trust and credibility.
This includes proactively monitoring and responding to customer feedback on various platforms, ( yelp review sites, social media, website testimonials, google reviews). In this manner, businesses can demonstrate their commitment to addressing customer concerns while improving their products or services. Prioritizing online reputation management can improve crisis management, enhance your social media presence and improve the online content.
The Power of Customer Surveys for Online Reputation Management
Customer surveys can be a powerful tool in achieving the goal of improving your online reputation. Surveys help you gain valuable insights into customer satisfaction and perception of your brand, allowing you to identify areas for improvement and make necessary changes to enhance your reputation. By addressing negative feedback, improving customer experience and measuring the effectiveness of your reputation management strategies via surveys, you can maintain a positive online image over time. Consistently conducting customer surveys is key to ensuring that your business stays ahead in today’s competitive digital landscape.
Types of Customer Surveys for Online Reputation Management
Various types of customer surveys across different communication touchpoints can help with your online reputation management. To understand what customers think of you, read reviews across platforms- this could be website reviews, third party review platforms, social media websites and on internal feedback systems. Online reviews and feedback surveys enable you to monitor and respond to customer reviews to improve your reputation, and improve on negative results to positive content.
Certain metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey measures customer loyalty and identifies areas for improvement. Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys help you understand how satisfied customers are with your product or service. Employee feedback surveys gather feedback from employees to improve customer experience and reputation management efforts, while brand perception surveys measure how customers perceive your brand and identify opportunities for improvement. By conducting these different types of surveys regularly, you can stay on top of changes in customer preferences, address specific issues, and improve overall customer experience – all while bolstering your online reputation management efforts.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Calculating your Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a great way to understand your users. As per this scale, we are primed to identify detractors and promoters of the brand. This happens by asking customers how likely they are to recommend your business on a scale from 0-10. Ideally, promoters would be those who score 9 or 10 and are most likely to recommend your business. On the other hand, detractors are customers who score 0-6 and may harm your reputation.
While this scale is widely used and is a standardized metric for customer satisfaction evaluation, there are some limitations to this. NPS scale may not tell the whole story and is not applicable for certain sensitive areas of discussion.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
The Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) survey is a powerful tool for businesses looking to improve their online reputation management efforts. By asking customers to rate their experience on a scale of 1-5 or 1-10, CSAT surveys provide valuable feedback on specific aspects of the customer experience. Conducting these customer surveys via dynamic emails and social media surveys can identify areas for improvement and help businesses make necessary changes to upgrade the customer experience.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
In today’s fast-paced world, customers value convenience and efficiency above all else. This is where the Customer Effort Score (CES) survey comes in. By measuring the effort required by customers to accomplish a specific task, such as placing an order or resolving an issue, businesses can identify areas where they need to streamline their processes to improve the customer experience. Utilizing CES surveys can help businesses reduce negative feedback and enhance their online reputation management strategy. CES type of surveys can be seen on websites, in-app surveys, signature surveys or embedded on dynamic emails. Responses from this survey can provide valuable insights that can be used to make data-driven decisions for improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.
How to Conduct Effective Customer Surveys for Online Reputation Management
To get the most out of your customer surveys for online reputation management, it’s to conduct them effectively. The important process will be to identify if your survey efforts will reach every consumer you target. If we need serious data, we need to put in serious efforts. Here are some ways to handle review management and focus on creating a positive reputation across websites and social media profiles.
Be objective specific with your surveys
To conduct effective customer surveys, determine your objectives and what you hope to achieve. Identify the specific information you want to gather from respondents, such as their satisfaction with your products or services, their experience with your customer service, or their overall perception of your brand. Using a mix of open-ended and closed-ended questions can help you get a well-rounded understanding of customer opinions. Having a clear goal can help you formulate better questions- this will lead you to all your answers.
Choose the real-time survey mediums
The right survey tool is key to getting the most out of your customer surveys for online reputation management. Factors to consider for the right medium include ease of use, customization options, and how fast the survey platform will be. Compatibility with your website or social media platforms is also a major consideration. Choose a tool that can reach out to your customers where they are. This includes messenger applications of Whatsapp, Meta messenger and new age features like AMP dynamic email surveys. In this manner, you can reach out to respondents where they are.
Draft clear, concise yet simple to understand questions
When drafting responsive customer surveys for online reputation management, keep questions clear, concise, and focused on the specific aspect of your business you want to improve. Avoid asking leading or biased questions that may influence the responses. Use a mix of open-ended and close-ended questions to get both qualitative and quantitative data. Including demographic questions can help you better understand your target audience and tailor your services accordingly.
Apart from the technical aspects of framing a question, keep it conversational in nature to solicit more responses. An intimidating questionnaire may not get the job done efficiently.
Organizing and analyzing data for swift action
Every data obtained via real-time medium can empower businesses to assess their products and services. Once you have organized the data, analyze both quantitative and qualitative data to identify trends and patterns in customer feedback. Use this information to improve your business strategies, address areas of concern, and capitalize on strengths. When analyzing qualitative data, look for common themes and sentiments expressed by consumers. Goal oriented customer surveys can also detect unhappy consumers. While negative feedback can be bad news, this serves as an opportunity to make things right by closing the feedback loop at the earliest. Merren has robust tools that offer fast analytics wherein brands can reach out to their patrons sooner.
Offering incentives for survey completion
People need a reason to attempt customer surveys. This is where survey incentives come in. Rewards can be in the form of discounts, coupons, complimentary gift items to name a few. Rewards on survey complete must be appropriate as per the target audience. Respondents must be made well aware of survey rewards prior to filling out responses. This gives them a motivation to fill questionnaires and you can be rest assured of a high response rate. A meaningful incentive can often uplift how a customer feels about your brand.
Responding to customer feedback, offline or on the internet
Regardless of whether the feedback is positive or negative, responding promptly to customer reviews can make a significant difference in how customers perceive your business. By acknowledging and addressing customer concerns, you demonstrate that you are committed to providing exceptional customer service. Additionally, responding to feedback from professional social media accounts can help build trust with customers and enhance your brand’s reputation. Consistently monitoring and responding to customer feedback denotes that brands care about their audience and are making the effort to actively reach out. Over time, this makes a lot of difference to the brand’s online reputation.
Be transparent with customers across platforms
Transparency should be a key consideration throughout the survey process, from drafting questions to presenting results. One way to be transparent is by including information on how survey data will be used and what changes will be made based on feedback received. Additionally, respond to negative feedback in a timely and professional manner, showing that you are actively working to address any issues raised by your customers. Transparency also involves the subject of privacy concerns. Prior to launching a survey, taking necessary permissions can enable respondents to know what a brand will do with the information. It is important to visit the privacy policy of mediums that are going to be used to conduct customer surveys.
Conclusion
Investing in an online reputation management service can make a world of difference for many business owners. This becomes mandatory as organisations begin to see new growth. Brands can opt for professional teams who can augment their online business listings, work on their search engine optimization practices (navigating through keywords and online visibility), and help build their brand reputation among their consumer base.
Merren uses new age mediums of Whatsapp, Facebook messenger to collect in moment feedback. All insights are visible on dashboard and can be segregated as per filters. This way, clients can understand customers sooner and work around product and service upgrades.
If you want to launch real time surveys for your customers, look no further. Try our 14 day free trial here. No strings attached.
