Are Untracked Issues Hurting Your Brand's Reputation?

Your brand and reputation are some of the most important assets an organization possesses.

It directly influences how customers view your company and, ultimately if they're willing to do business with you or not. Unfortunately, good reputations can be fleeting, while bad ones can stick to an organization's public image like chewing gum rolled in super glue.

Untracked issues could be at the root of a brand reputation problem, festering just beneath the surface. Regardless of industry or market, if a business wants to succeed it should pull back the curtain and take a look at issues that may be hurting its image.

"No customer interaction goes unnoticed."

Mitigating Negative Experiences

In the digital age, no customer interaction goes unnoticed - good or bad. Social media networks and online review sites make it easier than ever for unsatisfied customers to publicly air their grievances. That negative feedback can affect B2C and B2B organizations alike: A 2014 Nielsen study found that 54 percent of U.S. consumers have declined to do business with a company because of the way it conducted itself with past customers.

In many cases, the issue isn't necessarily that a problem arose in the first place, but that the business's response was unsatisfactory. If there's no system in place to comprehensively log and respond to customer complaints, companies will appear as if they simply don't care about the customer experience and making things right.

Complaint management and issue tracking software can help keep customer service representatives on track by providing the tools needed to monitor incoming complaints and follow up as needed. Businesses demonstrate their commitment to a quality brand experience by quickly replying to each and every customer concern. Even when something goes wrong, they'll know you'll make it right.

Negative customer reviews can hurt your brand's image and reputation.

 

Avoiding Lengthy Delays

Not all harmful issues are going to be as overt as customer complaints, though. Internal workflow inefficiencies can be just as pernicious as any unanswered complaint. Take software development, for instance. Unseen issues can completely derail a project, resulting in costly delays as teams scramble to correct the problem before it is released to production. These problems can affect the quality of the end product, as well as push back release dates.

It could be a lose-lose situation as far as brand reputation goes. On one hand, if they release a shoddy piece of software, they'll be associated with a low-quality product. On the other, if they take the extra time to ensure software's completely ready for release, end users might view them in a negative light for having overly long development times.

Issue tracking software can serve as a collaboration platform for developers, quality assurance specialists and other project stakeholders to ensure nothing falls through the cracks. This streamlines the development process, resulting in faster production cycles and higher-quality software - and that's good news for your business reputation.

Once a brand image goes south, it can be difficult to fully rehabilitate to its original status. Rather than spend years of time, energy, and money rebuilding customer trust, avoid the situation altogether by maintaining a watchful eye on all ongoing issues. Complaint management and issue tracking software can help keep your reputation untarnished.

Contact Issuetrak's Product Experts today to get started!