How do you handle brand damage from negative touchpoints?

Handling brand damage from negative touchpoints requires a strategic and proactive approach. First, assess the extent of the damage and identify the specific touchpoints or incidents that led to negative perceptions. Address the root cause swiftly and be transparent and accountable. Craft a clear and empathetic communication strategy, engage with affected customers personally, and seek feedback to rebuild trust. Continuously monitor sentiment, create positive touchpoints, and commit to long-term improvements. Ensure legal compliance and use the experience to build resilience and crisis management capabilities.

Externally, with the customer the first step every time is to apologise. This cannot be overemphasised. If the problem is made public, apologise publicly as well as privately. If the problem is made known privately, respond privately. Do be very specific about what you, as custodian and orchestrator of your brand’s behaviour, is apologising for. Let the apology ring true. Let it acknowledge and reflect the emotional state of the customer who your brand has hurt/upset. Lastly, the apology itself can often just be words and the words may be enough. But sometimes some reparations need to be made. Because words may not be enough to counteract the negative touchpoint.

I learned at my very first "real" job @BursonMarsteller how to handle brand damage on accounts including Coca-Cola (during its launch of the "New Coke") and Tylenol during a national product tampering scare. The teams there were top-notch professionals who taught me about proactive, honest, transparent, caring communications that went a LONG way toward instilling consumer confidence.

As per my experience as brand leader, following five approached are quite meaningful and effective: Acknowledge the problem quickly and honestly.?Don't try to deny or minimize the issue. Apologize for the inconvenience or harm caused, and take responsibility for the mistake. Empathize with the customer.?Put yourself in their shoes and understand their frustration or disappointment. Let them know that you care about their experience and want to make things right. Take immediate action to resolve the issue.? Communicate with the customer throughout the process.? Learn from the experience and make changes to prevent it from happening again.?

The solution can have two parts: Short and Long. In our hyper-connected world, even minor negative touchpoints can snowball. Short-Term Measures: Acting swiftly. A quick assessment is essential. Assure customers you're on it—this buys time. Issue a proper timely apology and introduce "Customer Goodwill Incentives," like discounts or service add-ons, based on severity. Long-Term Measures: Use the F.A.I.R Framework. Find: Employ sentiment tools and surveys. Analyze: Classify as High, Medium, or Low. Implement: Opt for quick fixes like apologies and consider long-term solutions like staff training. Review: Track KPIs, and gather constant feedback. While Immediate action is vital, long-term strategies ensure resilience and loyalty

1. Acknowledge the problem, (and some versions so it doesn't sound scripted - which is going to definitely rile someone up more. 2. Clarify the details 3. Don't add to their frustration with a delayed solution 4. Observe, and see where their pitch gets higher or where they exclaim. Read micro-responses, they are always the quickest giveaways to their reaction. 5. Pause 6. Explain what happened, there's no need to go into excessive detail but make it a narrative with no ambiguity. And no loops. 7. Thank them for sharing with you, reassuring them of your commitment to their experience with the brand 8. Offer a solution, and always give them an extra something for that icing. 9. Cement the tone for the next interaction.

If your business is caught in a scandal or any sort of public upset: Don’t- ?Delete comments/reviews ?Ignore the issue ?Respond in haste or without gathering the facts ?Post on socials or send out an email with a vague statement that doesn’t address the issue and causes further confusion/frustration Do- ?Acknowledge those that have taken the time to contact you directly ?Thank your audience for bringing the issue to your attention ?Apologise with sincerity ?Tell them what you’re going to do to improve ?Have the above come from your CEO/Managing Director/Owner ?Actually do what you’ve mentioned above

You know the one "I apologise if you..." A typical politicians apology that doesn't really mean anything. There's no responsibility taken with this kind of apology. If you've made a mistake, own it. Say sorry, mean it and find a solution.

When our flagship product shipped with a major defect, even our most loyal customers struggled to accept apologies from their reps. Customers experienced pain and our competitors were quick to position their less advanced, but stable products as an alternative. The market had long awaited our product and we were letting them down. Our field teams and customer service teams did their best to address customer concerns. But, the team's confidence was declining. Our CEO wrote an open apology to our customers. He took responsibility and promised his commitment to invest resources to fix the product. The message was sent to every customer. It also appeared on our website. The CEO kept his word and our brand's reputation actually improved.

Whilst we never want to intentionally do wrong by our customers if/when it happens, it can help build our brand reputation if we apologise and make it up to the people who were negatively impacted by it. It starts with owning the problem and recognising how it impacted our customers lives. This shows we are willing to see, hear and acknowledge where they are coming from and how it impacted their life negatively.

Building a brand is like gaining trust! It might take a lot of effort to build trust and all it takes is a few seconds to break it. Negative experiences or touchpoints spoil the brand’s goodwill which in turn surely has a negative impact on repeat purchases or with customers becoming your ambassadors or advocates. A brand should not promise what it cannot offer or give. It is very important to accept one’s mistake and be as empathetic as possible to the consumer’s complaint.

People remember and rate brands based on their willingness to own their mistakes and put new customer-driven initiatives in place to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Refunding money or offering people valuable freebies also go a long way to come out strong of a seemingly negative blunder.

Generosity and empathy goes a hell of a way with a frustrated customer. ?Give the damn refund ?Let them know that their feedback has been taken into consideration and you’ll be looking to improve how you can ?Gift them additional items - e.g. “we’re sending you another x, so your daughter can enjoy it with you next time” ?Respond like a human! Injecting empathy and compassion can turn the whole experience around. If there’s anything you can do to reduce the possibility of an upset customer spreading negative opinions about your brand, DO IT!

You have the understand the system from a very macro perspective. Research, Question, and meet a range of relevant subject matter specialists to catalyze a multidisciplinary approach toward solving your problem. A brand identity is successful when its internal aspirations and intentions are congruous with it's omnichannel interactions.

Learning and improving means truly listening. A quick fix for one customer before going back to the same old ways doesn't do anything for your brand or your reputation.

Taking real tangible steps internally is very important to make sure it doesn’t happen again. People are usually open to an apology the first time, especially if they are compensated and you promise it won’t happen again. If it happens again, it will be very hard to come from it without reputation being damaged for good. If it’s really bad and a lot of people are upset, it will spread like wild fire too.

Use the learnings and feedback from customers to improve your products and processes. Look at it more like a Kaizen journey where you will always seek to improve your products/brand/processes, especially since customer's needs keep changing.

A negative touchpoint can, at times, be a useful opportunity in which someone viewing your actions from a different perspective has identified area for improvement. Often, they simply want to see that their opinion has been taken onboard and change actioned - and that is mutually beneficial. Plus, by taking negative feedback onboard in a calm and grateful fashion, the tone of the negative onlooker will likely change to one of respect. They’ve now been able to contribute positively to your business, and a positive relationship is developed. This certainly isn’t the case for all negative touch points, but for instances like reviews, this is key.

First, promptly acknowledge the issue across multiple channels like social media, email, and your website. Be transparent about what went wrong and the steps taken to resolve it. Reiterate your brand's core values to remind customers what you stand for. Educate them on preventive measures you've implemented, such as new quality checks or employee training. Offer resources like FAQs for further information and encourage customer queries to foster two-way communication. Follow up to gauge the effectiveness of your efforts and keep customers updated on improvements. This approach rebuilds trust and enhances brand equity.

It’s important to own our mistakes as a brand and then explain what went wrong and what we have done to ensure it happens again, on a practical and brand level.

While negative touchpoint can erode trust, communicating transparently about the issue, how it was handled, and how the experience is impacting future actions and efforts by your company provide an elevated experience to actually cultivate trust. Customers loathe bad companies who are indifferent about their poor customer service, products, etc., but they also can struggle to connect with companies who only exemplify their efforts in the best light. There is a connective opportunity to demonstrate shared ethos when you acknowledge a mistake, bring customers inside to how it's being addressed, and allow them to help hold you accountable for keeping true to your stated "new" actions/behaviors in the future.

Monitoring negative reviews and sentiments are important, but what is more critical is to call back the customer and explain what went wrong and why. And then track the CX behaviour across platforms like browsing the app, or social media channels. Engage with the customer in cute surprises, (coupons, discounts, special sample packs etc) and then win back the trust, to test loyalty. Such measures shows that the company is there to help, if things go wrong & cares about customer loyalty.

Every mistake is a chance to learn. You can't learn until you follow your mistake and its rectification to its very conclusion. After you put out the fires, stop and asses for the weeks and months ahead. It is very likely that you missed a metaphorical ember that can reignite the issue.

- Develop agile methodologies to better predict potential negative touchpoints and work on shifting them into positive interactions through a deep understanding of customer needs and identifying what’s really relevant for them. Then implement the tools that empower your team to do the same with a clear brand voice to build on. This will help not only to the customer experience, but also brand engagement and loyalty.

For me, this has nothing to do with marketing, and everything to do with people. Treat your customer service team badly, and they won't care about your customers. Same for factory team and product quality. Same for marketing team; stifle creativity, stifle care. Then when it comes to dealing with a problem or tricky situation, the people in those teams just don't care. There are (despite what the media says) plenty of jobs out there. People can walk and 'just paying someone' isn't enough. Treat your team with respect and gratitude and you'll find that customers are treated well too. And don't take my word for it. Listen to Gary Vaynerchuk.

It's important to consider the long term and short term aspects of brand identity damage. While mitigating immediate short term issues by being proactive and empathetic towards affected parties, it's also incredibly important to take up effective future-oriented actions so that potential customers and investors view the brand positively. It's also a good idea to use such incidents as case studies for the future and show a learning curve on the part of the organization. That's what builds trust and brand advocacy in the minds of all stakeholders.

One of the most important questions to ask yourself if there's a negative touchpoint for your brand is why. What caused this to happen in the first place. Is your brand clear, consistent and relevant? Does it stand out? Does everyone, full time, part time, in every department, including collaborators and suppliers understand it? Do they know the actions they need to take to live by it? A brand is much more than logos and websites. It's your values, your personality, your tone of voice, your vision and everything in between. If every decision is based on that, you'll have far fewer negative touchpoints with the audience you care about.

Identify the root cause of the brand damage and take full responsibility for your actions. Identify patterns or areas where your brand can make operational or product/service enhancements. Always use negative touchpoints to come back stronger. It is an opportunity for the brand to improve and evolve. Take responsibility for any mistakes and apologize when it is necessary. An apology should always come from a place of authenticity and empathy. Not from a place of fear and manipulation.