With consumers expecting more and more of brands they interact with, reputation management has become crucial for effective business strategy – but in the age of artificial intelligence, there are a number of fresh challenges to organisational reputations. Nick Gold, managing director of Speakers Corner, explains how firms can adapt to shape conversations around their business alongside new technologies.
Over the last couple of years, businesses have entered a whole new world where artificial intelligence can automate more of our manual tasks every day. That might sound intimidating, but it’s inescapable. So, as AI strips back our practical responsibilities, it’s your reputation that upholds your business and helps you stand out from the crowd.
As business leaders, we’re hyper aware of our reputation. A 2024 survey commissioned by Speakers Corner found that reputation management is a greater concern than falling profits, potential recession, and staff turnover for almost two-thirds of business owners.
The good news is that when everything else is out of your hands, your personality is the one thing you can control. That’s why the most successful leaders are those who don’t just manage their reputation; they live and breathe it.
In our perpetually online world, everything is magnified. We have 24-hour news cycles and viral posts that can send a single opinion into the stratosphere. Everyone everywhere has a platform to share their thoughts (or air their grievances). So if you’re leaving it up to everyone else to talk about your business, you have much less control over your reputation than you used to.
It’s unlikely — maybe even impossible — to manage your reputation and get everything right 100% of the time. But if you embody your values, you can at least own your failures with vulnerability and openness. This builds connections with people, encouraging them to believe in you and your brand.
Offline vs online reputation
Online reviews are everywhere. Sites like TripAdvisor and TrustPilot are designed to establish your trustworthiness as a brand via customer reviews. Even chatbots like ChatGPT and Perplexity can offer up recommendations.
But with companies incentivising users to leave feedback (and some evidence of fake reviews), many users treat online opinions with a degree of cynicism. We don’t just want to hear from the small percentage of people who love or hate a brand. We’re interested in experiences from everyone in the middle. This comes from anecdotes and human interaction, not just online reviews.
Customer experience lays the foundation for your reputation. Customers are influenced by so many different factors that you need to keep in mind, from external review sites and influencer recommendations to information from people they know to their own first impressions.
It is possible to attend to all these factors while maintaining your personality and reputation. Take Disneyland. Disney has resorts in California, Tokyo, Paris, and more. Each park has the same Disney “magic”, but attends to local sensibilities depending on its location. The experience isn’t the same for everyone, but visitors buy into it because of the Disney brand.
That’s why it’s more important than ever to establish and uphold your customer experience standards. When customers know and trust you, they’re more likely to forgive the odd blip and support you through turbulent times.
Repairing vs learning from reputational slip-ups
Few businesses escape controversy completely, even if you do everything right. One person’s bad experience can go viral, creating a storm of negative publicity. According to our survey, a third of businesses experienced negative media attention, reduced profits, and even withdrawn investment as a result of reputation issues.
Where a few errors would have gone unnoticed a decade or so ago, businesses now know that a single slip-up could send their reputation spiralling out of control. This creates a lot of pressure for business owners: any action you might take can be magnified to the nth degree and brought to the fore. As a result, we spend a lot of time thinking about our presentation, reputation and the potential for fallout.
But the truth is that if we own our mistakes the same way as our successes, there’s no real need for large-scale damage control. By approaching everything we do with vulnerability and a willingness to learn, our customers will see us for who we are, knowing we live and breathe our values.
The concept of reputation management is flawed because it requires a reactive approach to bad publicity. Instead, leaders must understand their brand, embody its values, and share them with the world.
By doing this, you can shape the conversation around you and your business rather than waiting around for the influence of others. It puts you in the driving seat and helps build deeper connections with your most important stakeholders. And if controversies crop up, you’ll know how to deal with them, using the same empathy and honesty that form the foundations of your reputation.