Measuring Your Reputation: Taking Action

15/12/2009

By Andrew Lester

Your company's reputation is other peoples' views of your company: it shows the level of "trust" they have in you on the things that matter to them. The key issue is how do you as a Small to Medium Sized Enterprise get a clear view of how people see your company without spending a lot of money on expensive research. The answer is relatively simple but it does require a consistent approach to give you information that you can compare over time.

The first thing you need to do is decide which groups of people most influence...

...your reputation. These will include: customers, prospects who won't buy from you (check out why not), and your employees. These are the main groups that will define your reputation. Focusing on them will give you a good understanding of your company's reputation and why. (You can get input from the other groups later).

Getting information from customers and prospects is easy: ust ask them. The only difficult bit is to be consistent in the questions you ask and how you ask them so that you don't get distorted feedback. The real issue here is to get their views - not yours spun back to you! To get the best feedback you should use a structured set of questions and apply them consistently - if you'd like free help with a questionaire, please drop an email to info@carr-michael.com, with reference "FBT December09".

Your company's reputation needs to identify the key factors that impact how people rate you and the importance of each factor. Key drivers of your customers' views of company reputation include: product quality, pricing, availability, service back up, accuracy in paperwork, service support, honesty, supporting good causes locally and... continued on page two >

 

 

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