Press releases

Conversionation launches Online Reputation & Sentiment Service

 Email Article |  Twitter |   delicious |   LinkedIn |   Technorati 

The fear of a bad reputation or negative feedback keeps many businesses from engaging in conversations with customers and prospects on social media. At the basis of this are often miscomprehensions and a lack of tools and strategies to efficiently monitor, analyze and respond to online feedback. This leads to missed opportunities and often to wrong investments of time, resources and budgets. Analyzing online sentiment, reputation, trends, influencers and conversations leads to insight and is a must for businesses that care about what people say and do.

Conversionation's Reputation & Sentiment Service is designed to help businesses to monitor, analyze and act upon feedback and online trends, focussing on both customer satisfaction and the bottom-line. With an integrated approach that combines tools and know-how, the service identifies opportunities and possible threats, with a positive and realistic attitude instead of being too defensive and scared.The service is based on measurable facts and the tools are function of the business and customer service goals.

Social media are still unknown territory for many businesses. If you have been working with them for a longer time, you know that most of the brand reputation and negative feedback related fears to start with social media marketing, engage in conversations with people and handle online comments are what they are: fears.

However, many businesses do not have this experience yet and are exploring the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and (perceived) threats of social media and public online feedback.

Every day, people and businesses tell us that their fear of a “bad” reputation or criticism is big. That's normal: for many businesses the whole social media phenomenon is new and overwhelming. That is all too often forgotten by early adopters and experts.

The fear for the extent of possible criticism on social media and Internet is not realistic though. On top of that, many business fear that they will need to many resources to deal with all criticism.

There are some crucial misunderstandings regarding online reputation and sentiment:

1. Social media monitoring, sentiment and reputation management are not a matter of constantly being on guard as a watchdog. Brand equity matters but you do not strengthen it by ignoring or silencing online feedback.
2. One doesn’t always have to respond immediately, or even at all, to every form of criticism everywhere all the time. Yes, we live in a world with increasing customer expectations and both positive and negative customer experiences can travel fast. And, yes, customer service and relationship marketing are key but business is still a combination of customer satisfaction, the bottom-line, selling and ROI.
3. Companies that are active in social media often take on a defensive attitude and are prepared with a small army of opinion makers and brand advocates to stamp out the negative buzz as it were. Some social media consultants even advise companies to pro-actively find people who could, sometimes against payment, make as much ‘positive’ noise as possible so that ‘negative’ reviews disappear.

The question is what happens if you engage in these practices in a misinformed, defensive and even obsessive manner:

• You invest more time and resources than needed
• The ROI of such practices is negative
• You don’t help your clients at all
• Sooner or later opinion deforming practices will see the daylight one way or another
• You don’t focus on your core business and value creation processes
• Fear keeps you away from one of the main information and communication channels your prospects and customers use: social media

Are there threats? Yes, you always have the malcontent former employee, unethical competitor or eternal complainer.

So what do you do?

• You start by monitoring and analyzing in a structured and efficient way
• You ensure an optimal customer experience
• You define a reputation management plan
• You define the resources and structural needs to put it in place
• You listen to feedback and respond correctly
• You define some guidelines
• You offer people channels to give feedback
• You keep the communication lines open
• You measure and improve

Since we often talk to businesses that deal with criticism anxiously, dramatize the possible impact of feedback, comments and reviews, or invest too much time and resources – without a clear plan – in reputation management practices, Conversionation has launched a new offering: the Reputation & Sentiment Service.

This Reputation & Sentiment Service consists of four components:

• A professional tool to monitor the reputation of your company and that of others, including trending, influencer and sentiment analysis
• Strategic documents to help you to define your reputation & sentiment management strategy
• Scripts to define a planning with the various steps in setting up processes, drafting guidelines and involving the right people
• Online consulting in function of your individual market, business and "situation"

Read all about it (features, pricing etc.) here or contact us immediately if you want us to send more information right away.