What to Do When Things Go Wrong (And Your Customers Aren't Happy) [14 min]

0:00If you've been feeling stuck in your business and wondering if you're the reason it's not growing faster, I have something for you. I'm hosting a free, no-pitch, live class called Three Money Beliefs That Made Me Millions. And I'm sharing the exact mindset shifts that helped me go from million-dollar years to million-dollar months. This isn't fluff. It is a surprising strategy that changed everything for me, and I want to share it with you. Like I said, no pitch, no fluff, just you and me talking about how we shift our beliefs around money to make you millions. Save your seat now at jasminestar.com forward slash millions.

0:32I can't wait to see you there. Every touchpoint matters. If customers feel let down even once, they're often ready to look somewhere else. This is why it's so important to recognize that trust is the lifeblood of your business and you need to do what you must to protect your brand. Welcome back to the Jasmine Starr Show, a place where we discuss business mindset and today, how to rebuild trust with your audience. And I know, even if you've never lost trust with your audience before, I want you to keep listening because you're going to learn strategies that are going to help you prevent it from happening and strengthen that trust even further.

1:05Okay, so in this episode, we're going to dive into strategies that you can take to safeguard your reputation and a three-step framework to regain trust after you've taken a reputation hit. Now, I am sure that you've learned by now that trust is the foundation of customer loyalty. And in my opinion, this is the greatest asset for any brand. I just read a stat in the Edelman Trust Barometer that said 81 % of customers are considering trust as their biggest factor in their purchasing decisions. So when people believe in your brand, they are more likely to become customers and then repeat customers and eventually evangelists.

1:44Now, evangelists are people who not just like what you do, they tell people about your business and what they like about what it is you do. This directly impacts your bottom line. But when that trust is compromised, well, skepticism can arise, which can affect future purchases. Now, research shows that 63 % of consumers will stop engaging with a brand after a single negative experience. Just one. Now, it doesn't matter if it's like a tone-deaf piece of content or a bad interaction or a poor customer service encounter. So what's our big takeaway? Well, every touchpoint matters. If customers feel let down even once, they're often ready to look somewhere else.

2:24This is why it's so important to recognize that trust is the lifeblood of your business and you need to do what you must to protect your brand. Now, I'm going to pause here and let you know that customers will notice even if they don't initially notice. So just this past week, we had noticed that somebody had made a purchase on the inside of a social curator and bought an additional resource. But according to our records, our customer success team, Rosie, reached out and said, Hey, Jasmine, it looks like she already purchased this. And so Rosie took the action steps to let her know, hey, we're so happy that you bought it again, but our record showed that you actually have access.

3:01And then Rosie refunded her the cost of that purchase. She was so ecstatic and she simply replied, this is why you're the best of the best. That built trust with her. Every step of the way in your business, we are in control of the things that we can do to make sure that we just don't see our customers, but that our customers trust that we see them. Okay, so I want to get into two actionable strategies that can help safeguard your brand. And then we're going to get into a three-step framework to rebuild your trust with your audience. Now, the first strategy I want you to consider is creating a proactive reputation plan.

3:36I'm just going to say a PRP. Now, you're probably thinking, Jasmine, what's a PRP? What is a proactive reputation plan? Well, it has two components, and here they are. Component number one of the PRP is a system to monitor your online presence. I want somebody to have regular or close eye on social media or where your audience can leave reviews, feedback, or things like this. Now, this way you can get a handle on things as soon as you need and your team won't have any surprises. So I'm going to take a little bit of a departure and explain how this actually works in our business. When we are in a launch, when we're promoting something, we're running a lot more ads than usual, which means that somebody on our team is reading all of the comments during the launches.

4:19is. Why? Because people will leave oftentimes negative, false, or terrible things that we just don't want out there. So we're going to make sure that somebody on the team has a regular task to go through all of our ad sets to make sure that comments are being cleaned up. Now let's get on to component number two of the PRP, and that's a documented brand strategy. Now this is basically a document that outlines the brand promise and the offer promise so everybody knows how to respond if something goes sideways. So your team is a direct extension of your brand. And when they feel prepared and confident, they're not just willing to handle challenges, they're eager to jump in.

4:56When you take time to ensure that your team really understands your brand core values, its voice, and response strategies, it means that if a situation arises, they're gonna know exactly how to approach it. That's what I just explained with Rosie, right? She didn't have to let us know, what do I do? She already knew, I'm gonna refund her, and then I'm just gonna let you know. because we have those things in alignment. Preparation not only builds confidence, but allows the team to handle issues with ease and with consistency. And that builds trust with your audience, even during challenging moments.

5:27I had an experience where somebody tried suing me. It was not a fun situation. But if that wasn't enough, this person tried getting other people to join a lawsuit. So within hours, my team came to me with drafted responses to that person. They had already informed our legal counsel, and they had to set up a meeting for us to discuss all of the details. No, the team was able to step up because they knew and they trusted our brand strategy. Now, everybody knew that the claim was absolutely bogus, but the team reached out to all the parties involved or those, like the people, like that person said, like, oh, these people are going to file alongside of me.

6:08Well, the team went ahead, reached out to this person, all other people potentially involved, and they wanted to connect and discover what was really happening. Now, I'm not going to get into details because I'm just a classy broad, but what I'm going to say is, number one, not a single person planned to join the claim. The person who filed the claim had lied. And number two, the threat to file was dropped entirely. Now, I am not sharing this story to talk about some person's awful litigious threat, but I just want to highlight how my team stepped up into huge ways to protecting our brand and our reputation because they felt in alignment.

6:49Strategy number two to safeguarding your brand is fostering a culture of quality control and accountability within your team. Prevention is all about setting really high standards internally, period. period. We as a team pride ourselves on having exceptionally high standards. Maybe you're listening and you haven't really started building a team. Or maybe you're listening and you have dozens or hundreds of people on your team. Regardless of the size, you need to ensure that every team member understands their role in safeguarding your brand's reputation. And then they can react and respond effectively if something were to happen that jeopardizes the brand.

7:27Okay, so how do you do this? Well, you start by implementing regular check-ins and reviews across departments to identify potential weak points in your processes, your products, or your services. This also means a periodic audit of your customer service, an audit of product quality or communications to ensure that everything aligns with your brand's promises and values. By catching potential issues early, you can fix them before they turn into problems or even larger problems that will impact that quality or reputation. So back in 2020, the creative team for Social Curator, we had received feedback and requests for more color diversity of our visual content.

8:06Now, we could have absolutely simply added more of what people wanted. So I'll get into it a little bit more. We have thousands and thousands of images in a photo gallery, and we have pictures of people's hands and side profiles, and people were saying, well, we want more brown, but not just brown, all different shades of brown. We want black and we want white and we could have went through and added all of those photos but I don't think that was enough. The team was good enough to know that more was needed from us. We needed to acknowledge it. We needed to own it. We needed to put our timeline to our deliverables and say, we see you and we're going to change.

8:44By sharing the plan within the community, they were able to hold our team accountable to what they promised. I truly believe that encouraging accountability within your team creates a proactive mindset. You're making them owners of their responsibilities. When everyone feels responsible for the brand's image and the customer service, they're more likely to prioritize quality and potential concerns. They're going to bring them to light. And when they do that, they're going to be protecting the reputation from inside the organization. So before we move on, I want to review. We covered three actionable strategies to safeguard your brand.

9:18Number one, create a proactive reputation plan, a PRP. And then number two, foster a culture of quality control. Okay, so what happens if something happened that actually hurt your brand reputation? Now I want to move on to the three-step trust rebuilding framework. Okay, so step one is to acknowledge and take responsibility immediately. If your brand takes a hit, let me tell you, the clock is ticking. The first and most critical step to rebuilding trust is to acknowledge the issue as soon as possible, ideally if you can within 24 hours. Now, we've learned from brands in the past that with quick acknowledgement, it really demonstrates to the audience that you're aware of the problem, that you value transparency, and you are committed to addressing their concerns.

10:01But delaying this step can lead to more speculation and rumors and increased frustration amongst your audience. And sometimes this causes even more damage to your brand's reputation. I don't know. Do you guys remember when Starbucks faced a backlash a few years ago, back when they were doing racial profiling at one of their stores and it was like an incident? And within hours, the CEO, Kevin Johnson, publicly apologized and the company took steps to address the issue by closing stores for racial bias training. Now, I truly believe that the quickness to the response helped mitigate damage and reinforce their commitment to inclusivity.

10:34Okay, let me tell you something. I want you to remember this. If you need more time crafting apology or a statement for something, it's much better to just say, we are aware of this issue and we're taking it seriously and we are going to update you with our solution as soon as possible instead of saying silent. Now, I understand that what I just said right now was, oh, as if you have to make a public press statement. Oftentimes, this is just dealing with a single customer or with a small group of clients. Just let them know that the response is coming, but don't go silent. So staying proactive in communication, even if you don't have all the answers, it lets your audience know, yes, you're prioritizing the situation and their experience is important to your brand.

11:18So remember, quick acknowledgement isn't about like quickly rushing to an apology. No, it's about showing respect for the people who trust you and letting them know, hey, you're on it. So step number one was to acknowledge and take responsibility immediately. And step two is to show how you're making things right. Now that you've acknowledged the issue, it's time to show your audience you're making things correct. And this is where the rubber meets the road. It's a step that you can't skip. So how do you do this? I want you to start by implementing new policies or procedures to prevent the issue from happening again.

11:51If your brand-based criticism for, let's just say, like a really bad marketing campaign, it was a little tone deaf, I want you to introduce stricter review processes for all future content. This shows that you're committed to doing better. Next, keep your audience in the loop about making changes as you're making them. Whether it's through social media or newsletters or blog posts or regular updates that demonstrate, hey, we're serious about improving. It's not enough to say you're making changes. You need to show that you're following through and making progress. Finally, engage your audience in the process.

12:25Yeah, you can invite them by asking, hey, I want your thoughts. as we implement these changes. Encourage them to voice their opinions. This not only makes them feel heard, but it also reinforces that you are committed to making things right together. So the third and the final step to the trust rebuilding framework is to create a long-term recovery plan. This is how you're going to take it up a notch. Yes, boom, let's go. Now, the first two steps address the immediate concerns, right, like we're taking care of it. But with well-thought-out long-term strategy, it shows your commitment to making meaningful change and rebuilding trust with your audience.

13:01You should plan to invest in ongoing training, resources, development for your team that's appropriate for the situation. This could mean workshops on diversity, inclusion, and effective communication, helping everybody understand the core values that guide your brand. Next up, you're going to want to consider restructuring any processes that maybe contributed to the initial issue. Maybe, you know, it's creating a dedicated task to monitor brand communications or implementing regular feedback loops that these changes can help ensure that the mistake will not be repeated. Remember, rebuilding trust is a marathon.

13:37It's not a sprint. By focusing on these three elements, you're going to demonstrate that your brand is serious about making lasting changes and it's dedicated to culture of accountability and growth. Okay, so let's review what we went over so far. Step number one is to acknowledge immediately, responding within 24 hours, being transparent and taking responsibility. Step two in the rebuilding trust framework is to show how you're making things right. And step three is to create a long-term recovery plan that includes investing in team training, restructuring, and any problematic processes you might have.

14:11I want to say thank you so much for listening to The Jasmine Starr Show. If you know a business owner who can benefit from this episode, please send it to them. This episode could help prevent reputational damage and it's going to foster stronger connections with your audience. This is a small departure from the things that we normally talk about, but it's so important that you stay prepared and confident for what could be in store. Or better yet, you learn right now and you don't have to repeat anything from here on out. And can I get an amen for all of that? Thank you for watching and listening to The Jasmine Starr Show.

14:43It is an honor and privilege to create this content for you.