When does a large brand start damage control on their reputation? What do they do and how far do they take it before it’s overkill?
Yesterday day ABCnews.com reported that “UPS Hits Lowered Target for 4Q Profit“. Apparently the profits toward the end of last year weren’t going to live up to expectations. So UPS decided to pre-empt the situation by reducing those expectations before the confirmed results came in.
The story is that increased operating costs were required, “to handle the mass of holiday shipping”. UPS claims an 8 percent increase in shipping for 4th quarter 2014 and if the shipping giant was caught off guard by that, it could explain the situation.
This affects both stockholders and their customers. Obviously stockholders don’t like lowered earnings – that’s a given.
Customers don’t like packages arriving late. UPS, Inc. CEO said, “…the company set out this past holiday season to win the trust of its customers and “protect the brand.” That’s because apparently a similar situation with delayed shipping occurred in 2013.
This time the company tried to anticipate the need, but didn’t get enough packages to cover the costs of the staff needed. And while UPS is committed to customer service, prices will be going up this year.
That might just cover them for the next holiday season – and make stockholders happier this time around.
What about the customers and their view of the UPS reputation? Any time there is less than the expected result and then consumers are expected to pay more for the expected result, the manure can hit the spreader.
When this type of situation happens, what should you do? What would you do if you were UPS?
What would you do if your were the competition?
Are you seeing any reputation protection issues on the horizon? Any reputation management issues to consider?
How about using reputation marketing and reputation maximization to handle all that and more?
We only bring that last alternative up because UPS saw this coming a year away and still didn’t anticipate the possibilities adequately enough. Using reputation marketing as part of a Reputation Maximization program can minimize and/or avoid problems like that.
Most people like technology – especially when it connects to their phone and doesn’t invade their privacy. We understand that drones might be used by some companies in some areas to deliver packages in a more timely fashion. Is there some way to align or partner with high-tech solutions, get more packages delivered more efficiently and potentially upgrade the brand with a cutting edge approach? Maybe.
Maybe we suggest this just because we want a company to step up and get on with it and start doing the drone delivery thing now instead of later. Yeah, that’s part of it.
Another answer might be to start sooner rather later in illustrating the situation to create a shared reality. If you can’t do that, maybe your reasons why aren’t so real after all – at least to the public who is on the receiving end.
So run some ads showing empty locations with an appropriate paragraph describing the scene. Run a commercial asking,”What would you do if this was YOUR business?” Show the time passing on a clock. Show the occasional customer come in and ship a package. Ring up the ongoing sales in the corner of the screen.
Do the math at the end showing whether it was a profitable, breakeven or loss for the day.
The caveat: You need to be careful handling situations where people expect you to go the extra mile on your dime instead of theirs. But that’s what many refer to as ‘customer service’, right? So you need to figure all that out – this is just a blog posting food for thought.
A problem common to well-established brands is the entitlement regular customers feel. Anticipate the problem, focus group it, survey it, and find out what alternatives are acceptable. Then you can show the survey as part of your advertising and preemptive reputation repair handling.
In fact, build the survey into your normal operations so people get used to seeing it. Maybe it’s a simple either/or question: Would you rather us close early or stay open later which requires us to charge more after a certain time?
And before you do ANY Of this, think through what you competitors might do at any stage of the game. The smart ones will already be anticipating a move from you and might even try to head you off before you get started.
Just don’t wait so long to figure it all out where you act too late and it catches your customers off guard causing reputation issues you could have avoided.