What is your reputation worth?

Ask this question to Carrie Prejean, Tom Petters, Bernie Madoff or Michael Phelps and you might get some different yet profound answers. It is not difficult to identify those individuals who have damaged their reputation. For companies, those that understand the importance of managing reputation are often the most successful.

Often, a split-second decision can ruin a reputation forever. For celebrities attacks on reputation can mean losing endorsements. For a company it can mean the loss of millions in profits. Even a country’s reputation can be damaged by a single action. If it is so easy to ruin a reputation what is the value of protecting it?

EBay understands the importance of protecting its reputation. To provide customers the best experience online, EBay allows buyers to rate their online shopping experience. Potential sellers looking to push something online, that have poor ratings, will get overlooked because of their bad reputation. Isolating sellers with poor reputations in fact boosts EBay’s reputation as a place where people can get good customer service.

Putting a dollar value on a good name can be difficult, but it is better for a company to protect its reputation rather than try to clean up after its mistakes. Are you doing everything you can to protect your company’s reputation?

Reputation already damaged? Healing takes time.

If your reputation is already damaged the only thing that will heal it is time. However, there are three things you can do to begin to improve your reputation.

1. Apologize. If you messed up admit it. Say you are sorry to your employees, clients and customers. Let your stakeholders know that you were in the wrong, but that you are working to resolve the situation.
2. Improve. Don’t make the same mistake twice. Change your behavior and perform the way you are expected to perform
3. Maximize performance. Act the way you should have acted every day. Be patient and do good work and over time your reputation will improve.

If the bad reputation is a result of rumors find out who started the rumors. Be direct and honest. At the end of the day performance will hopefully outweigh any lies.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 9:10 am and is filed under Risdall Marketing Group, Risdall McKinney Public Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.