Reputation maintenance. Business reputation of the company. What is reputation management

Brand reputation- this is a set of fixed judgments about it on the basis of significant for target audience criteria (honesty, responsibility, decency). Reputation involves an analytical approach in forming an opinion and is based on reliable knowledge and assessments. Most often, this is supported by the consumer's own experience.

Reputation is a dynamic process in which strategic objectives companies calculated for the long term. Reputation depends on how and by what methods entrepreneurial activity companies. It reflects deep economic and social characteristics brand.

Why is reputation important?

Reputation is equally important for every socialized object - from a person to an international company.

According to research, more than 60% of investors consider brand reputation as one of the main factors in shaping its value. Reputation can provide from 20 to 80% shareholder value companies, representing the real asset of the company. Reputation is slowly formed, but, unlike tangible assets, is relatively stable and is not subject to market price fluctuations.

reputation significantly affects the sales performance of branded products. 87% of people who shop online are sure to ask for company reviews before buying a product. 73% of consumers are more likely to trust a company if the majority of its reviews are positive. 80% of online shoppers cancel their order after reading a negative brand review. Reputation is sometimes referred to as "credibility" - 62% of consumers believe that a company with a good reputation will not produce poor quality products.

At the same time, reputation is important to a company. when hiring employees. Potential employees are always looking for information about a future employer. 67% of professionals turn down a job offer because of a brand's bad corporate reputation.

A good company reputation helps to attract new customers and retain existing ones, increase investment inflow and sales efficiency. Long term reputation supports the company in the event of economic difficulties due to loyal customers.

Brand reputation and image

Quite often, consumers and even brand leaders equate the concept of "image" and "reputation". In fact, image is a component of reputation and has other prerequisites for its formation.

Acquaintance of the consumer with the brand begins with interaction with the components of the corporate identity - this is a means of objective positioning. When these elements are perceived, an image is formed in the human mind - this is an ideal image that is created by the brand to create a certain impression of the company in the minds of the target audience. In this way, image is an artificially created opinion among a certain group of people. Its task is to create a positive image of the brand among the audience.

Unlike the image reputation cannot be created need to earn. Reputation can be thought of as the response or reaction of the public to a company's policy. Reputation building takes place throughout the life of the brand and works for the long term. If the image depends on external characteristics, then reputation depends on a holistic perception of both internal and external qualities of the brand.

What is reputation management

For the effective implementation of brand reputation management, a reputation strategy. This program defines a set of measures for the formation of a positive reputation and mechanisms for their implementation.

Who is in charge of brand reputation management?

Brand reputation management brand managers. A company may have its own or hired specialists who develop a comprehensive strategy for building a reputation. In creating a reputation strategy and its immediate implementation, the main officials companies.

Brand reputation management strategies

Formation of reputation at the expense of the first persons and top managers of the company

In many cases reputation of the head of the company is inextricably linked to brand reputation. A public leader commands the respect of both potential customers and consumers, as well as partners and employees. A recognizable person inspires confidence in the company, confidence in its professionalism and respect. Such a leader will serve as a strong motivation for other employees who will also work to improve the brand's reputation.

More about personal branding read our article.

A strong team as the basis for building a reputation

This aspect of reputation management is most important for those organizations that provide various expert services or technology solutions. For example, in branding agencyKoloro Several specialists are working on the creation of the brand - a project manager, a designer, a marketer, a copywriter. All of them are responsible for different aspects of the work. Productivity and quality of work is supported by effective communication between all responsible employees.

Careful study of the mission and philosophy of the company

A brand philosophy based on core virtues helps shape the image responsible, decent or honest company. Over time, if the image is reinforced with appropriate events, it will turn into a positive brand reputation.

Emphasis on the strengths of the company

The easiest way to manage reputation is through such brand value as quality(products or services). This effectively increases the loyalty of existing customers and attracts new ones. In addition, the quality is easy to check (by trying or giving it for analysis) or test (by ordering a service).

As an advantage of the company, you can use years of experience in the provision of services and indicators of successful implementation projects. A big plus in favor of building a positive reputation will be confirmation of the quality of work by certificates and participation in international competitions or exhibitions.

Financial stability can also be used as one of the components of a reputation strategy. This will help to gain the trust of investors and partners, potential employees.

Corporate social responsibility of the company

It is important to take into account not only the interests of the company, but also society - from suppliers to ordinary employees. Care and concern of the company about its employees plays an important role in shaping the reputation of the brand. By voluntarily taking responsibility for improving the quality of life of its employees and society as a whole, the brand acquires additional advantages, especially against the background of inactive competitors.

The best results can be achieved by integrating at least two or three strategies in the company at the same time. Special attention should be paid corporate identity development, which is closely related to brand reputation. Specialists of the branding agency Koloro develop the name, slogan, logo and other elements corporate identity.

Reputation management technologies

To achieve the above strategies, the following technologies can and should be used.

Organization of special events and promotions

It is a powerful tool for attracting public attention. This includes the organization of exhibitions, presentations, fairs, participation in conferences or seminars, competitions, social events.

This helps to implement several reputation management strategies at once. A public leader who confidently speaks about the merits of a brand at a conference will attract new partners and customers. A strong team of employees represented at the competition will show the professionalism of the company.

Plays an important role carrying out social actions- they best show the responsibility of the company.

Every day, thousands of workers traveled from South Asia to Dubai to get jobs to support their families. The cost of a call abroad is $0.91/minute, while the average wage- $6/day. Workers were unable to contact their families regularly. In 2014, Coca-Cola launched a promotion helloHappinessPhoneBooth. A special vending machine accepted cola bottle caps (can cost $0.68) and provided 3 free minutes for calls abroad, allowing workers to save money.

Strengthening internal corporate relations

Patriotism of workers in relation to their company also contributes to strengthening the reputation. Create strong team the following activities will help:

• association of employees for achieving one goal: the formation of common values;
• support high level of professionalism: development of employees through trainings, seminars;
• employee motivation and formation of corporate culture;
• support favorable atmosphere for the work of all specialists;
• understanding between employees;
• implementation elementscorporate identity .

Business-to-business (B2B) communications

Interaction with partners should be based on conscientiousness implementation of agreements and transparency cooperation goals. Reputation building in the business environment depends on rational brand leaders and their thoughtful decisions.

Media relations

Competently built press relations to a large extent influence the attitude of the public towards the brand. From time to time it is worth holding press conferences, inviting several representatives of the media to them. Good relations with the press is not as important for building a positive reputation as it is for preventing negative reviews of the company. Therefore, journalists should be provided with the necessary information about the company's activities in a timely manner.

Do you want to know more about creating an ideal image and building a reputation? Subscribe to our newsletter at the bottom of the page and call by phone - we will be happy to advise you on all your questions! Do not forget to order the development of corporate identity from us - this is the foundation for building the reputation of your brand!

AT modern world the activities of individuals, both in the business sector and in the segment of narrow specialization, are determined not only by the actual capabilities of a person, but also by his reputation. Due to their reputation, many people and companies have achieved disproportionately greater successes and stages of development than their skills allowed. This is due to the fact that doing the right thing reputation maintenance, you can discover new facets of the trust of employers, customers, as well as investors and business partners, conquer new markets for the supply and sale of goods for personal business, as well as develop and participate in every possible way social activities. However, it should be said right away that the wrong actions aimed at preserving the reputation and raising it only aggravate the situation of the business and may threaten its further development.

How is reputation maintained?

In order to carry out the correct maintenance of reputation, it is necessary to take a set of measures that analysts advise to divide into groups according to the meaning of the action, direction, and also sort by frequency and effectiveness. For ease of understanding these actions, schemes have been developed that are taught to marketers in European educational institutions. These actions affect both the industrial and social spheres. Manufacturing affects the complex of measures that scientists attribute to objective factors affecting the maintenance of reputation. Among them are the maintenance and increase in the quality of goods, production activity, business events, as well as bringing the range in line with market needs. These measures are called objective because they are within the power of the companies themselves or people who are interested in maintaining their reputation. These activities are fully feasible and are, in fact, part of the production cycle of a person or company, which allows you to improve your image and reputation without interrupting work.

The second set of measures that are necessary when maintaining a reputation affects subjective areas, such as the personal attitude of customers and business partners to the company, as well as sources of information about it that are not subject to the company itself. People's opinion is formed at the cognitive level and studied by psychologists, in particular, mass psychologists and social psychologists, which requires the involvement of specialists in the process, which is aimed at maintaining reputation. In order to work correctly with the attitude of people towards a company or a person, it is necessary to initially conduct a thorough search and analysis of existing sources of information, determine what factors make people or companies publish information, and also influence these factors.

How simple does the process of maintaining reputation using cognitive methods look like?

For ease of understanding what it is to maintain a reputation among the masses, we can give an example. Let's say a TV manufacturer wants to raise or maintain the reputation of a good manufacturer, attract new customers and not lose sales markets in a crisis. She divides her correct actions into 2 parts - she does one herself, and gives the other to work for special companies that deal with aspects of reputation. The company independently analyzes the market, the demand for specific types TV, and begins to make more popular brands one way or another, reducing the price of less popular ones. Thus, the required amount of goods gets on the counter, and unnecessary goods turn into promotional ones, which attracts customers and can have a good effect on the reputation. With this approach, it is desirable to increase the technological capabilities of TV in accordance with fashion trends, and also do not forget about design.

The second aspect that affects the maintenance of reputation is the work of specialists, analysts and social psychologists who search and analyze the media, forums on the Internet in order to find all possible sources of information about the company. With reviews that are positive, these specialists work by increasing their rating, as well as bringing them to the top of the search engine lists. At the same time, negative reviews are subjected to semantic analysis and similar text pressure, which causes the search engine to perceive them as duplicate or very similar articles, and, taking care of the "diversity of the search result" from which it, in fact, feeds, eliminate them. at all or move far back. With this method, which makes maintaining a reputation possible, potential clients and business partners will somehow encounter a whole range of positives, on the basis of which a primary opinion will be made, which will be supplemented by those actions that are within the competence of the company. With this approach, the results may exceed all expectations, the main thing is that the second set of measures should be carried out only by specialists.

Each of us understands how important it is to have an excellent reputation on the Internet, but not everyone checks it and even fewer try to maintain it somehow. Unfortunately, statistics show that people with a great desire to leave negative reviews if they didn’t like something, but leave good or neutral ones very rarely, because they are just too lazy. Since humans are not robots, everyone makes mistakes at some point and sometimes this leads to a negative review on the Internet, which can affect your sales.

To bookmarks

In this article, I want to talk about the reputation that comes from sites with reviews in the top 10 search results. We will not consider how to influence the company's reputation throughout the Internet by tracking every mention in in social networks and blogs, so this is a very complex topic and this requires at least a team and a decent amount of money. And reputation management search engines you can even do it alone, devoting several hours a week to this business. There are rarely sharp jumps in search engines, and if 2-3 new reviews appear there, then for the first time in a few days you may not even see them, and in some cases they may not even get into the top 10 search results.

Some time ago, SERM services of specialists who deal with reputation management in search engines became very popular, but not everyone wants to contact them, as this in some way can stain the company's reputation even more.

How SERM works and why it is dangerous to do it

So, if you don’t know, then SERM specialists are engaged in improving the reputation in search engines and they do it in the following ways:

• They write new positive reviews and post them, most often from fake accounts, and sometimes they simply pay authors with upgraded accounts.
• They look for negative reviews and try to hide them from the search results. On some sites it is quite easy to remove reviews through the administration, on others with the help of lawyers, and if you can’t get rid of them, they simply promote reviews on other sites so that the site with the negative disappears from the top 10.
• They create the illusion of dialogues on forums and Q&A sites where your company is shown in the best possible light.
• They wind up ratings and ratings in the most prominent places, for example, in the organization's card, which is shown by Yandex or Google.

It seems that everything is clear and if you order SERM, then the company's reputation will immediately become right level, but not everyone wants to use their services, so why? The answer is very simple and now I will give you a few arguments that stop many companies

• By ordering SERM services, you are already becoming a dishonest company, because you create an artificial reputation for yourself and mislead potential buyers.
• Not real reviews are written for your company, which means they can reveal it, especially if you come across an inexperienced specialist. For example, on the most large venues algorithms have been working for a long time that calculate the most active topics and check reviews. Very often they catch companies that leave reviews from one computer, just registering different accounts. Since they have one ip, then without any clarification of the circumstances, the company is assigned a badge that it falsifies reviews. And this is a big fat cross on your reputation, since it is almost impossible to remove this stamp.
• Dangerous ties. SERM specialists need to be chosen very carefully, because if you may come across a not entirely honest and very cunning person. As soon as your paid package ends, he may deliberately throw in a few negative reviews so that you again have the need to order his services, as a result, this will turn into an endless cycle. Therefore, you need to think a hundred times before contacting such people.
• Not the best argument, but still some are tormented by conscience when they order such services and it is she who stops them at the last moment.

How to maintain your reputation

So, I hope you understand what kind of reputation I want to tell you about and now let's move on to tips on how to maintain it on your own, without resorting to all sorts of specialists and various cheat services.

• Reputation audit. The simplest reputation audit is done like this: enter “your company name” + various prefixes “reviews”, “is it worth buying”, “throw”, etc. into the search engine. After doing a small audit of reputation in the search engine, it is best to collect the most useful sites according to the following list: - Sites where there is at least one negative review - Sites with the most positive reviews - Sites that rank 1-3 in the search results. This We will need a list for the next steps.
• Dealing with negativity, constant dialogue. On almost all popular review sites, you can create an official account for your company and use it to respond to any reviews. If you respond to every negative review and offer a solution to the problem, then you can at least partially restore your reputation.
• Remove reviews. If there is a sharply negative review about your company that puts an end to your sales, then it is better to try to remove it. There are several ways to do this, but not the entire Internet is under your control, so you won’t be able to do anything with some publications. - Solve the problem with the client and ask him to delete the review. But on some sites, even the author of the review himself cannot simply delete it, so you will have to contact the administration. - Dodge and find a reason for the site owner to delete the review. For example, if there are serious insults in the review, then the administration will most likely delete it. The simplest example: in the reviews, no one can call you a fraudster or a criminal until the court recognizes it, which means that a review with this word violates the laws of the Russian Federation. - Appeal to the court. Expensive, but sometimes it's worth it, especially if the review is fake. Such a procedure costs from 30,000 rubles, and even the coolest lawyer will not give you a 100% guarantee for the success of this case.
• Encourage customers to leave reviews. In order not to have to write reviews yourself, you need to look for ways to motivate customers to leave them on their own. To do this, you need to select sites that are in the top 3 search results for "company name + reviews" and come up with a bonus for which people will be happy to leave reviews there. For example, one of the online stores gives a bonus of 200-300 rubles for leaving a review about goods on Yandex.Market and other sites. Agree, for 200-300 rubles it is more interesting for buyers to leave reviews than just like that, besides, their attitude towards you may change depending on better side even if they didn't like it all at first.
• Well, the most simple and banal advice in the end. Work honestly and engage in dialogue with your customers on social media more often so that as early as possible what problems and difficulties your customers face. And remember that your reputation is not only about mistakes and failures, but also how you got out of conflict situations. For example, Toyota made very serious mistakes, after which it seems impossible to restore its reputation, but it simply never abandoned its customers. In 2010, Tayota's brakes and accelerator malfunctioned, causing the company to issue a recall of more than 8 million vehicles. And no one screams around the corner that Tayota are scammers, as they admit their mistakes and correct them publicly, apologizing 1000 times to their customers.

One way to improve the efficiency of a reputation-based system is to narrow the circle of business partners. Frequent transactions of approximately the same size contribute to the establishment of strong trust.

However, in modern society people are narrow specialists and have specialized skills. Many professionals - plumbers, furniture repairmen, car dealers, etc. - interact relatively infrequently with individual customers of their services. Buyers may often buy from the same sellers, but competition among suppliers still renders transactions impersonal; each such transaction hardly has any advantages over alternatives.

Various commercial and legal institutions. Parties relying on the legal system rely on the fact that full compliance with the terms of the contract can be ensured not by the partner's fear of damaging his reputation, but by the threat of a lawsuit. However, when it comes to contract enforcement, the legal system has many shortcomings. This system has general character and therefore based on general rules, which may not be well adapted to the specifics of the industry in which the disagreement arose. Legal procedures are often confusing, lengthy and costly. Moreover, legal rules based on historical precedents may not take into account technological and other changes in real life. Judges and juries may lack the experience to effectively assess industrial disputes based on technical questions in order to correctly apply legal rules. When resolving international disputes, the powers of the courts are sometimes insufficient to enforce their decisions. In addition, in all historical eras, corruption and bias of judges, as well as foreign policy influences, have contributed to increased costs and the obvious arbitrariness of judicial decisions.

For all these reasons, private institutions have often played a more important role than the judiciary in setting standards of conduct, enforcing contracts, and resolving disputes. In most cases, private institutions, by their actions, support the reputation system itself.

From medieval private judges to modern rating agencies.

In the era that preceded the emergence of nation-states in Europe, merchants developed a system of private laws - lex mercatoria - and attracted private judges to resolve disputes. On the same range of issues, the norms of merchant law often differed from the generally accepted norms of church law. At that time, merchants depended on each other for a range of services, whether it was securing travel or helping to ship goods in foreign ports. The merchant's good reputation among his peers was crucial to successful management affairs. The system of merchant law provided an evolving model of behavior more adapted to the needs of merchants than the norms of ecclesiastical law. The institution of private judges who ruled on various disputes greatly simplified the problem of a merchant finding a third party capable of interpreting disagreements between two merchants in order to reach a conclusion about the relative reputation of each of them. This system effectively solved the most important tasks - deciding who is right, and informing other merchants about the names of the wrongdoers.95

In various historical eras to inform the public

about the loss of a good reputation by a particular merchant, various mechanisms were used. During the colonial period American history merchants who violated the norms of commercial law were paraded at the pillory. In the 18th-19th centuries. whalers from different countries, having met at sea, they arranged feasts, during which the captains of the ships could exchange a variety of information, including disputes with other whalers that needed to be settled. In the US, where the whalers lived in several seaside towns, they were aware of each other's affairs without such meetings. The system of compliance among whalers, based on regular communication, was so effective in its early days that not a single case involving property disputes between whalers was recorded in the courts, although determining the owner of a killed whale was a rather difficult issue.96 (Must can it be the one who first hit the whale with a harpoon, or the one who first fixed his flag on it, can the crew of a whaling ship take on board a whale killed by whalers from another ship, or should they leave this prey to those who hit it? ?). Only at the end of the 19th century, when products of whaling began to be replaced by products of oil refining, disputes between whalers began to be considered in the judiciary. At this time, whaling rents began to decline and whaling time horizons began to shorten; the combination of these factors undermined the system of reputations that existed among whalers.

Today, local service improvement bureaus mediate conflicts arising from consumer complaints about local manufacturing and trade enterprises, and disseminate various information about such complaints.

Similarly, credit bureaus disseminate information about past loans and whether they have been properly repaid, and consumer associations disseminate survey results on various issues, such as how satisfied consumers are with the treatment of their insurance claims by various companies. Public disclosure of such information strengthens incentives for responsible behaviour. The desire to maintain a good reputation encourages merchants to resolve disputes through service improvement bureaus. Knowing that a worsening credit rating will prevent them from obtaining loans on favorable terms in the future, people are more responsible in repaying loans already received. The same logic applies to insurance companies.

Boycotts and embargoes: internal discipline. The main characteristic of the institutions whose job is to maintain the reputation system is their dependence on sanctions applied to individual individuals. If the implementation of these sanctions involves significant costs, some of the participants in such a system may refuse to implement them, which will reduce the effectiveness of the system as a whole.

Merchant guilds, which existed in the Middle Ages in Northern Europe, were associations of all foreign merchants trading in a given city.97 The most important problem that these merchants faced was that the cities in which they traded did not always fulfill their contractual obligations, such as protecting merchants from local thieves. The only significant countermeasure that merchants could resort to was to refuse to trade in the offending city, but this led to the appearance of the free rider problem described above. In the main shopping malls Merchants from various cities gathered in Northern Europe, especially in Bruges, and this circumstance made the implementation of the embargo even more difficult. In addition, cities faced with an embargo announced by merchants tried to persuade individual merchants to violate it by offering them especially attractive deals. Guilds can be seen as an institution through which merchants coordinated their response against cities that violated the terms of trade agreements.

In 1280, as a result of disagreements over the responsibility of the city of Bruges for the physical protection of merchants, the guild of foreign merchants of this city attempted to impose a trade embargo on Bruges, moving trade to Aardenburg. However, the embargo was broken when the city of Bruges offered preferential terms to merchants from various cities who decided to take advantage of the lack of competition. Such failures prompted the guilds of various cities to unite in a new, larger organization, called the Hansa, or the Hanseatic League. If the Hansa declared an embargo on trade in any city, and some merchants violated this ban, then their home cities could also be embargoed, or the violating merchants could be denied access to goods from other cities - members of the union. After another conflict in 1358, the Hansa re-imposed an embargo on trade in Bruges; the city again responded to this ban by offering preferential terms to merchants from the Hanseatic city of Cologne and from non-Hanseatic cities, in particular Compiègne. However, this time, thanks to the strict internal discipline that existed in the Hanseatic League, the embargo eventually achieved its goal - the city of Bruges agreed to comply with the terms of the commercial charter.98

It would be wrong to interpret this historical episode as a simple distributional disagreement, where a gain for one side means a loss for the other. In fact, institutions like the Hansa, which help maintain agreements, have an important function in increasing overall efficiency, which helps explain their emergence and persistence. From the point of view of the opposite side - the city - the very possibility of not fulfilling the terms of the agreements at the same time represents an inability to behave honestly. Such inability can cause considerable damage. In 1283, King Edward I of England, in connection with the violation of these promises to protect foreign merchants in his kingdom, noted that "many merchants stopped coming with their goods to our country to the detriment of trade and for the whole kingdom."99 In our time, as in the past, people find it useful to maintain mechanisms, procedures, and institutions that restrict their freedom of choice or allow others to force them into contractual obligations, because these same mechanisms make them more reliable and trustworthy business partners.