While reputation management for some businesses may revolve around accumulating favourable reviews and online ratings, other companies are beginning to adopt an altogether wider focus for their on the upkeep of consumer perceptions online.
There is no brand in the world that exists without any customer issues. With this in mind, it’s highly beneficial for companies to invest in the wealth of advanced technology that exists to serve the reputation of their brand. Artificial intelligence and big data alike provide businesses with an all-encompassing overview of their reputation while helping to facilitate its growth.
The Science Behind The Art
Discussing the arrival of big data solutions in the world of reputation management, Martech Outlook Magazine acknowledged that for many businesses, maintaining the reputation of their brand was regarded as more of an art than a science.
However, the more traditional and archaic approaches to brand management are steadily being outmanoeuvred by big data and optimised with AI.
(Image: Forbes)
As the chart above illustrates, the science’ of big data has already had a seismic impact on all exponents of the world of marketing over the past three years – and the subject of brand reputation is no different.
Today, through the medium of big data and AI-driven analytics, brands firms can tap into a sea of social media posts, online communications and mentions in order to draw well-rounded conclusions regarding their products, services and conduct.
While big data plays an instrumental role in the mining of such a wealth of data, it’s the role of AI to sift through sentiments and monitor its brand’s performance not only on a social scale but on customer review platforms too.
Due to the ease in which customers can share posts and how quickly emotive and negative reviews and company experiences can go viral, it’s vital for brands to effectively monitor and respond to feedback where necessary. It’s this need to be adaptive that makes the adoption of reputation monitoring tools essential for companies with a relatively sizable reputation. Utilising tools that champion the application of big data can help businesses to protect their reputation online. With the help of AI, tools can detect when customers are complaining about the company or its products and alert social media operatives to address the problem swiftly.
Likewise, AI can sift through big data to show when users are praising the company. This can be an opportunity for administrators to engage with the customers in a bid to enhance their reputation. Or just as easily it can be a chance for the company to take notes on what products or services are generating favourable feedback.
The Power of Chatbots
In an interconnected world, poor customer service can often lead to reputational damage. For this reason, it’s never been more important for companies to invest in Chatbots and other AI tools that can get to work in automatically tending to data-rich information to automatically respond to customers. In this day and age, the level of around-the-clock service that chatbots provide is seen as essential in ensuring that customers are responded to swiftly and efficiently – regardless of whether it’s 3pm or 3am locally.
(Image showing different ways organisations use AI chatbots. Image: Statista)
Businesses that have been using Chatbots have consistently reported better levels of customer service. This has, in turn, aided companies to grow their reputation online by virtue of limiting the instances of negative complaints that they receive due to delayed responses. Through a combination of machine learning, big data and AI, Chatbots are capable of acting to prevent complaints from customers as a result of delays in answering customer concerns. Furthermore, the programs can understand the natural language of customers and respond quickly to their concerns in a familiar and appropriate manner.
What’s more is that it’s becoming easier than ever for small businesses and enterprises to utilise chatbots within their website’s coding – and there are plenty of pre-made scripts, plugins and website themes that accommodate the use of chatbots.
For instance, Mentionlytics references Mastercard using a Facebook Messenger-based chatbot that enables customers to check on their account transactions in real-time. This has helped the payment giants to greatly enhance their customer service model. Through the advanced algorithms of machine learning, Chatbots can learn natural language, interpret it, and respond in an acceptable way for the query being asked. Furthermore, the software can reply instantly to questions.
Facilitating Social Conversions
Social media is the most prominent platform for virtually any public discussion. While private conversations and messages remain just that, social network users have been largely open about discussing the sorts of experiences they have whilst using various products and services. Complaints have become commonplace on social media, due to the presence of brands on various platforms and the various responses they can attract.
The rise of social platforms has significantly helped send conversations about whether a new app has a frustrating bug or a new service has a fatal flaw onto a fully global stage. But international conversations about brands represents a double-edged sword for businesses. By monitoring social sentiments about products, companies can look to champion positive reviews and mitigate negativity online.
This is where brand reputation management can easily find itself transitioning into social media marketing. By utilising big data, companies can quickly identify the social media posts that could be damaging for them and address them before the have a chance to go viral. But, significantly, they can also pounce on positive posts and messages and either share them or reference the content in a way that provides the business with some cost-effective publicity.
When looking to maintain online reputations, it’s worth understanding that, while online negativity is admittedly more widespread, positive posts that are generated by users rather than the company itself can help to generate greater public trust in brands and could forge together a community of brand advocates at the same time. In this respect, big data can go a long way in not only managing a company’s reputation online but also optimising it.
