Why is online reputation management important for your company? Better optimization from the start is the best when it comes to tackle your worries related to your company's tarnishing reputation in various blogs, sites, forums, social networking sites etc. It could have a million dollar effect on the brand that you built through your works, over the year. And also about the resources you had raked in.
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You certainly wouldn't like to get googlebombed with "Miserable failure" or get trapped in a "Dell Hell". These are two of the most prominent examples of how your brand can be vulnerable to negative commentary works in various platforms as mentioned above.
'Miserable failure' , was the keyword which would lead you to the white house's official website, implicating Bush's government failures over the years and people's anguish for the same. It went on to tarnish the official website of the US government's most important establishment, 'the white house'. And 'Dell Hell', was yet another public forum that got immensely popular and had significant negative affects on people's perception about the Dell's product(laptop, desktop etc). This forum was initiated by a Dell customer who felt he was cheated. But, truth is, we don't know who's handiwork is that.
Same could be true about your company's reputation. People could be talking about your company's brand, services/products, or your policies, key executives and many other possibilities. A new website or forum could be launched with words such as "sucks" and other offensive language, prefixed or suffixed to your company's name. You never know!
The colossal effect is, you could see all your efforts put in over the years to build a brand brilliance, into the drain. To counter such kind of malicious activities, company's can go for Online Reputation Management.
When should you go for ORM?
You might need this service when:
1.You become apprehensive about people's or your competitors intentions to distract you.
2. You can also use this service as a reactive optimization measure to counter such activities.
3. You can also use this to self evaluate your company's reputation in Online world.
What comprises an effective Online Reputation Management?
ORM is ultimately about materializing your brand; safeguarding it from malicious attacks. There are several companies who offers online reputation management services. The basis of the service is same for everyone. The ORM normally comprises these 4 major sections as laid below:
Monitoring : This is about monitoring the activities inside the web world, forums, social networking sites, etc, that has got something to do with your company's name. The popular platforms for such monitoring processes consists of Google alerts, yahoo alerts, Rss feed subscriptions, search results, social media tags such as tagfetch, keotag etc, to various social networking sites such as feedster, facebook, orkut etc.
Analyzing: All the data gathered from various monitoring platforms are then scrutinized to check if they can have any negative effects on your company's reputation.
Materializing: Reputationsmanagement materializing is all about making your company's brand materialize over the people's perception, always in a positive sense.
Control : This is the last part of the ORM, and this lets you have control over those events. After that, you decide which events are good and which are not. You're finally in the control of things which can promote you or demote.
All-your call!
It is famous fact that selling to an old customer is far cheaper than getting a new customer. Increasingly hotels have realized this fact and are now focussing more towards increasing customer satisfaction and brand loyalty to retain existing customers. In the world of online reviews, prospective guests can easily evaluate and estimate the quality of services being offered by a particular hotel and hence it is imperative for hotels to perform extraordinarily well at all times. Moreover, give no chance for the guest to be unsatisfied with their stay experience in your hotel. Nice reviews ultimately lead to attracting new customers with the credibility and brand image built in the process.
Do not give wrong expectations - Do not set guest hopes on things you cannot deliver. Like hotels should stop glorifying their budget hotels as luxury hotels. This practice does more damage than profit in the long run. Instead of over glorifying, hotels should excel and advertise what they are capable to deliver. They should delight the customer at every service they provide so that their guests spread positive word of mouth about the hotel on all review websites and remain loyal.
An easy tip can be to remain an underdog and offer services more than you were expected to.
The hotel staff is the heart of any hotel and needs to remain motivated at all times. It's only they who are the touch point to the guests. Therefore, it is necessary that they be trained to handle unpleasant situations at all times even when the customer is angry or makes unnecessary demands. Staff should be well aware about hotel's policies and offering so that they do not have to contact manager for every small guest demand and provide a resolution immediately.
Staff needs to be empathetic and have a problem solving approach for customer grievances.
Hotels should be able to recognize repeat guests and regular visitors and make them feel special during the entire stay. Repeat visits explicitly imply that you are doing something right that these guests appreciate. The hotel should ensure that the service quality graph only goes higher. Repeat guests are like brand ambassadors to your hotel who spread positive word of mouth both offline and online.
A quick tip can be to remember all the loyal guests by their name and if possible, by faces too, and welcome them warm-heartedly every time they pay a visit to your hotel.
Hotels can nail customer satisfaction by continuous learning about guest expectations from their stay experiences. The medium can be as simple as a short feedback form when they check out or a survey over e-mail. From the input, the guests provide, whether they praise or complain about your hotel, the more the hotel gets to learn about their guests' preferences. Hence better is the quality of services they can provide.
That is why guests should be encouraged to post and share reviews, write testimonials, give feedback and suggestions on review websites and even brand website. As this will help hoteliers to meet customer expectations to a greater extent.
Revenue Managers and other hotel staff should also ask their guests to follow the brand on social media so that they can remain updated about the latest offers and discounts.
Once the guests have checked out, hotels should take initiative to remain in touch with their guests, inquiring them about their stay and also ask them what else they will like to add on the existing services of the hotel, etc. Engaging past customers amplifies the chances of them visiting again.
Hotel can stay in touch with past customers through SMS and emails telling them about new facilities, food menu, new festivals and exclusive offers etc. However, that not at all means that they bombard mails every next day that can instead irritate and force them to unsubscribe. Additionally, hoteliers should also ensure that the offers are reasonable and do not have irrelevant terms & conditions and are easy to avail.
Hotel business can be very rewarding and profitable if run with empathy and efforts. Hotels should be easily able to adapt to changing customer's demand and continually improve their services and offerings. Proper staff training can play a key role in ensuring promising guest experience. Incorporating latest tech in hotel industry like revenue management software, Online Reputation Management (ORM) tool coupled with a guest review collection can further help hotels to earn more revenues and maintain scintillating brand image at the same time.