FOUR STEPS TO SAFEGUARDING CORPORATE REPUTATION
Many firms consider brands to be among their most important assets and a loss of reputation as the biggest risk facing their organisation.
The logic behind this thinking is gleaned from both research and experience which shows that most customers will switch brands after just one bad interaction.
Human nature further dictates that dissatisfied clients talk more about poor than positive experiences with others, and this damaging word-of-mouth messaging can be enormously magnified through social media and ‘citizen journalism’.
It takes years for organisations to build a reputation, but in today’s 24/7 news cycle and social media-driven communications environment, a hard-fought brand status can be eradicated in an instant.
Consider the pressure the British monarchy, as a brand, finds itself under in the wake of Prince Andrew’s legal settlement with Virginia Roberts or UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s attempts to salvage the Conservative Party’s political agenda following ‘Partygate’. The UK Post Office is still attempting to move on from its scandal of more than 700 sub-postmasters and mistresses being accused of theft, fraud and false accounting in what has become widely regarded as one of the most widespread miscarriages of justice in British legal history.
Apr-Jun 2022 Issue
Henley Business School