Are you eager to learn what your customers really think about your business? Knowing what customers think about your business is invaluable, as it helps you identify areas of improvement and make decisions that will benefit your bottom line. Thankfully, you can take several simple steps to find out what customers think about your business. Whether you’re conducting surveys, analyzing customer feedback, or leveraging social media, you can use these 7 steps to gain valuable insights from your customers.
What Is a Poor Business Reputation?
Businesses can gain a poor reputation in many different ways. From delivering poor or lousy customer service, supplying faulty products, not offering refunds or exchanges, poor work ethics and business practices failing to pay suppliers, mistreating employees and clients, bad public behavior or comments, and so much more. Your company needs to cultivate a good image and deliver on the brand values, not just pay them lip service. In fact, a good reputation is vital to your business’ success; 60% of consumers say they won’t use a company they know to have or perceive to have a bad reputation.
Monitor Social Media Regularly
Social media is a fantastic resource for finding out what customers think. Regularly monitoring social media can identify any issues or concerns your customers are having. You can monitor social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube to find out what customers say about your business. Not only can you find out what customers think about your products and services, but you can also learn about their experiences with your company. By keeping an eye on social media, you can quickly identify any issues and respond quickly.
Additionally, you can also use social media to find out if customers mention your business. If so, you can take the opportunity to respond, giving customers a chance to praise your company. If you’re not actively monitoring social media, you could miss out on essential insights that customers have about your business.
Use Social Listening Tools
Although it’s important to monitor social media regularly, it’s also essential to use social listening tools. Social listening tools allow you to monitor social media passively. This will enable you to focus on your customers rather than constantly searching for feedback. There are several social listening tools you can use to collect customer feedback. Many social media management tools have social listening features, but if you don’t use a social media management tool, you can also use an external listening tool. Some of the most popular social listening tools include Sprout Social, Brandwatch, Hootsuite, and Simply Measured.
Work With a Reputation Management Company
There are many reputation repair and management companies, but you should only hire one with experience working with businesses in your industry. With a reputation management company, you’ll work with a team of reputation specialists who will help you identify, monitor, and resolve issues related to your online reputation. This will help ensure that the reputation management company you hire is qualified to help you improve your online reputation. Reputation management services vary, but they usually include the following:
- Identifying issues related to your online reputation
- Monitoring your online reputation and managing your online reputation
- Resolving issues related to your online reputation
- Resolving issues related to your online reputation can include responding to negative reviews, removing inaccurate information, and contacting sites with incorrect information.
Monitor Review Sites
Review sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Google are excellent sources of customer feedback. Customers visit these sites to leave feedback on products, services, and businesses. In particular, Google reviews are critical. A high number of reviews can lead to increased search engine traffic, whereas a low number of reviews can lead to a decrease in traffic. To monitor review sites for customer feedback, it’s essential to stay on top of review site updates. For example, Google recently updated its review policies and will no longer display reviews for businesses that have fewer than 10 reviews. To monitor review sites for customer feedback, you can either manually visit the sites regularly or use an automated review monitoring tool.
Follow Industry Hashtags
Suppose you’re targeting an industry with specific hashtags, like marketing, social media, or entrepreneurship. In that case, you can follow these hashtags to identify customers who might be interested in your product or service. These hashtags will also help you identify customers who are already interested in your product or service. You can follow hashtags on Instagram and Twitter or use social media monitoring tools to follow hashtags across different platforms. Following hashtags can help you identify customers who have already shown an interest in your product or service. You can then engage with these customers to learn how they use your product, how they feel about it, and what they’d like to see from your business in the future.
Search for Your Business on Search Engines
Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! receive thousands of searches every minute. When customers search for products or services, they usually input keywords into search engines. By searching for your business on search engines, you’ll be able to discover precisely what customers are searching for when they are looking for your business. You can search for your business on search engines by typing in your business name and city name. Searching for your business will help you discover what keywords customers use when searching for your business. This will help you learn how customers search for your business and how you can increase your presence in search engine results pages (SERPs). In addition to providing you with valuable insights, searching for your business on search engines can also help you identify negative keywords that could impact your SEO.
Ask for Customer Feedback
You can ask for their feedback if you want to learn what your customers think about your business. You can ask for customer feedback in several ways, including:
- Conducting surveys
- Responding to customer service inquiries
- Sending an email or social media outreach
- Holding focus groups
- Asking customers to recommend your business.
The method you choose will depend on the situation, but asking for feedback from time to time is essential. If you don’t ask for feedback regularly, customers may stop responding. If customers feel like they are being ignored, they may stop engaging with your business and may even share negative feedback.
Consequences of Poor Business Reputation
It might not be something you pay much attention to, but if your business has a poor reputation, it will massively impact your ability to do business and sustain longevity. From losing customers, reducing your ability to capitalize on the market, and increasing the risk of business failure, a poor reputation is more than simply gossip or hearsay.
On top of this, a company that is associated with any negativity will have trouble gaining and keeping staff, with 71% of employees in a recent survey saying they won’t work for a company with a bad reputation. It will also affect your ability to gain capital and form good supplier and vendor relationships too.
Conclusion
As a business owner, you may be eager to learn what customers think about your business. Thankfully, there are several ways to determine what customers think about your business. You can monitor social media, use social listening tools, work with a reputation management company, follow industry hashtags, search for your business on search engines, and ask for customer feedback. Following these steps, you can easily and quickly determine what customers think about your business.
