By Henry Brown

Whether you’re a small business working with a diminutive but dedicated team or a solopreneur, it’s likely that your success in business depends on your ability to give your customers and clients one thing…the personal touch. The personal touch is an important and valuable commodity in the increasingly impersonal world of business. Your ability to offer your clientele the right balance of personal attention and professionalism is the key to your ongoing success. However, while a good relationship with your business can drive loyalty and customer satisfaction, it also makes you more vulnerable should things go awry.

Having spent years building your reputation and nurturing your relationships with your customers and clients, you can really set yourself up for a fall if something happens to sour that relationship. While some customers will be forgiving of mistakes if they feel personally invested in your business, others may see it as the most egregious betrayal. Let’s take a look at three things that could besmirch your pristine reputation and what you can do to guard against them.

Mistakes

We all make mistakes, but we cannot merely resign ourselves to this fact. We must not only put contingencies in place to prevent them but be prepared to mitigate the consequences when they do happen. Needless to say, the best way to guard against employee mistakes is by ensuring that they are well trained and that their skills are tested regularly. When your team gets complacent or when skills begin to atrophy, this can make you vulnerable to mishaps. It can also be a good idea to invest in Professional Indemnity Insurance; see https://www.qdoscontractor.com/professional-indemnity-insurance for details. This will limit your liability where an omission or error in your services results in financial losses to a third party.

Employee behavior or absence

Everyone has bad days. Those days where it feels as though the weight of the world rests on our shoulders and we could collapse into a sobbing breakdown or explode in a volcano of rage at any moment. If a member of your team has a day like this and unloads their anger, upset and frustration on a customer (even if the customer is being unreasonable) this can result in a huge blow to your reputation.

Ensure that you operate a workplace wherein all employees feel they can come to you with their worries, questions and concerns. By alleviating the pressure on your frontline employees, you limit your risk of employee behavior causing a rift in your relationship with your clientele. Likewise, investing in a good CRM platform can give your customers continuity in the standard of service that they have come to expect from your brand, even if the team member that they usually deal with is off sick or on holiday.

Social media complaints

Nobody likes seeing complaints or unflattering claims made against them on their social media feed. Nonetheless, burying your head in the sand can cause significant damage to your reputation and undo the positive social name that you’ve spent years building.

Deal with social media complaints quickly and diligently. Be polite and courteous and demonstrate your willingness to seek a satisfactory resolution. This gives you an excellent opportunity to showcase your conflict resolution skills.

Your business’ reputation is perhaps your most valuable commodity. You have to be prepared to defend it!

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Henry Brown is an online marketing executive. When he isn’t talking shop, he’s roaming the streets of London, uncovering the extra-ordinary in the ordinary.