Seven Steps to Managing Your Online Reputation

A camera-store salesman recently steered me away from the compact, ultrahigh-tech camera I thought I wanted. Smaller is fine, he told me, but only if it fits in your pocket — any bigger will end up hanging from your shoulder anyway, so what’s the advantage? And don’t buy based on fancy features, he added; the differences between comparable models rarely result in better pictures for amateurs. The one feature you’ll really appreciate, he said, is how the camera feels in your hand.
Simple insights, but they pointed me to a very different camera, one that I’m deliriously happy with. Not only that, it was a few hundred bucks cheaper than the one I had wanted. Maybe that’s why everyone at the five other camera stores I had been to was a lot more enthusiastic about the compact model.
That sort of no-nonsense, no-hard-sell advice is one reason the store, B&H Photo in New York, is to the cameraphile what L.L. Bean’s Freeport, Me., store is to the outdoor crowd. Of course, if you’re not close enough to New York to make that pilgrimage, you’ll have to settle for the company’s Web site — but maybe that’s not so terrible. B&H’s online sales arm gets mostly great reviews in forums and rating sites.
Yes, you read that right — a New York camera store Web site that gets good online ratings. Anyone who has hunted for a camera online knows that’s a feat that defies the very physics of online reputation management. There are few categories of product outside of porn and Viagra that have a worse reputation than the camera-sales world, with New York-based camera stores seemingly setting the standard — to read the reviews — for apparent dishonesty and shoddy customer service.
If that were the whole problem, any dealer could look great online simply by behaving decently. As it turns out, that’s not good enough. Camera sales can be tricky and confusing, thanks to lens and accessory options, frequent model upgrades, different types of warranties, fast-churning inventories, substantial product defect rates and more. And camera customers are notoriously finicky, impatient and emotional when it comes to making sure they get exactly what they expect to get, at the best possible price, right away. All of which can lead even scrupulous dealers to unintentionally disappoint shoppers. And shutter bugs love to vent online. That means that legitimate dealers struggle with bad ratings, too. And as many small businesses — and even some large ones — are finding out the hard way, online ratings can hit the bottom line hard.
So how does B&H keep its ratings clean? It starts with two words: Henry Posner. Mr. Posner is a former professional photographer who started handling online customer service for B&H 15 years ago and now has the title “social media coordinator.” He is a ubiquitous presence on camera-oriented forums, blogs, ratings sites, Facebook, Twitter and wherever camera people share info and complain. If you Google any combination of “Henry Posner” “camera” “post” “complaint” and “B&H,” you’ll see much of his time is spent addressing perceived wrongs with B&H customers — with remarkable success, to judge by the ratings.
I called the ebullient Mr. Posner and asked him for advice for the business owner struggling to build a great online reputation. Here’s what he told me, boiled down to seven key points.
Henry Posner’s Plan for Positive Posts
1) If a customer complains, confirm, confess and correct:
“When customers go online and complain, the first thing I do is research what happened. I don’t open my mouth online until I have the facts. If the customer is right, I apologize immediately, and I ask what I can do as a gesture of my concern. I’m always willing to be generous when I’m wrong, and most customers are looking for something modest.”
2. If you’re not at fault, calmly make your case:
“I’m always honest with the customer, and that includes defending myself and the store if we’re right. I disagree 18,000 percent with the saying that the customer is always right — not in retail, he’s not. If he’s wrong, I explain why, speaking with confidence and authority but without being hostile or aggressive. There’s nothing I can say online or even by e-mail that’s just between me and the customer — I’m really talking to everyone who ends up reading or chatting about it. Even if the customer is terribly misguided or purposely malicious, I believe he deserves a cogent, mature response. If a dissatisfied customer’s emotions get the better of him, I just stop and wait for someone else who’s following the conversation out there to jump in to tell the customer to tone things down and refocus. It’s not that no one ever gets to me — I might mumble something while I’m typing, and sometimes I even jump out of my chair and blow off a little steam here. But I don’t put it out there.”
3. Go the extra mile for a trying customer, but not the extra hundred miles:
“You just can’t please everyone, you learn that here quickly. One customer will complain that our deliveries require someone to be home to sign for the package, and the next customer will thank you for it. In every business there are customers that make themselves expensive to service, someone who wants too low a price, or too much special attention. Every company has to decide what the threshold is for keeping these customers. Sometimes I have a frank conversation with a customer. I say, ‘This is how far I can go to help you. Now, are you going to help me by compromising?’”
4. Customers appreciate useful info, not blab:
“I try to give the overall impression that we’re not just a box house but an interesting place to do business with. I’ll let people know that the Met” — the Metropolitan Museum of Art — “is doing a photo contest, or Adobe is offering a free seminar. But I don’t try to fill Facebook pages with endless chatter or send something out on Twitter every 15 minutes — they’ll start seeing it as spam. The name of the game is quality of comment, not quantity. There’s a sweet spot, and if you hit it, the sales will come. I never forget that there’s a bottom line in this place, and everything I do has to eventually come back to it. If I’m going to ask for a raise here, I need to be able to say where it’s going to come from.”
5. Customers only think they know what they want:
“My job isn’t to help you buy something just because you ask for it. It’s to help you find a product that in my experience meets your wants and needs. It’s not about making the most profitable sale, it’s about leaving the customer satisfied.”
6. Keep your friends close, but your competitors closer:
“I dialog online with competitors all the time. That’s good for the industry and good for us. Manufacturers listen to us more closely about what we need when we’ve compared notes with other dealers. And we can help each other avoid some real customer traps out there. I get warnings about customers who place orders, make demands and then badmouth dealers in the worst possible way all over the place. And if I see a fellow retailer unfairly taking a lot of heat online, I’ll step in and try to help. Then I know they’ll do the same for me.”
7. Speak softly and carry a big rep:
“I can pat myself on the back online all day long, but nothing will have the impact of a good review on a ratings site. And then when a customer asks me to match someone’s very low price, sure, maybe I can come down a few dollars. But after that, I’ll just say, go ahead and Google that store’s name, let’s see what comes up. I never have to badmouth a competitor. If they’re sleazy, the word will be out on them online.”

http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/seven-steps-to-managing-your-online-reputation/?partner=rss&emc=rss