Controlling the Message: How Carriers Can Bolster Online Reputation

Picture this: you’re at the big-box store by your house. You’re kicking around the idea of pulling the trigger on that new TV.

But, before you do, you need to check the reviews. You pull up the Amazon app on your phone—as they put ~35 million product reviews at your fingertips—and see what other people think.

When you find bad reviews, you second-guess your decision and book it out of the store.

According to one study, 84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. And for companies like yours, that carries a tremendous amount of importance.

More Reviews, More Problems

The internet has brought an incredible number of options to the world of consumer choice. Manufacturers can’t just pull a crummy product off their shelves—with product reviews, that stigma lives on for years.

Truckers looking for their next career move have a similar situation. When faced with the prospect of joining your organization, the first thing they’ll do is Google you or ask friends for their opinions.

Here’s what they might find:

• Negative job board or company reviews on Glassdoor or Indeed.com.
• Facebook or Twitter posts from former or current drivers
• Posts on trucking forums
• Videos from upset or unhappy drivers
• Personal opinions from friends about poor experiences with your company

Just like you chose not to purchase that TV after reading negative Amazon reviews, you probably won’t work with a company with a stack of complaints against them.

So what’s a trucking company to do?

Controlling the Message

Companies dealing with backlash from former drivers are stuck between a rock and a hard place, as an Inc Magazine article outlines. Companies can actively hide negative comments and risk looking like you have something to hide, or they can run the risk of that opinion poisoning new and current team members.

That’s why companies must take proactive steps to address these issues before they get out of hand. Knowing why people complain in the first place is key to resolving issues.

Recently, MITSloan published an article on why people choose to voice their complaints online. In short, the authors find that customers take to the internet to complain because 1.) they are victims of a “double deviation” and 2.) they feel betrayed.

In fact, this “double deviation”—a product or service failure, followed by a series of failed resolution attempts—is involved with 96% of all online complaints.

In other words, online complaints happen to trucking companies when drivers feel betrayed by companies or when companies don’t adequately follow-up on their feedback. And that takes way more than an open door policy.

To control the message—to really address driver issues before they drag your company’s reputation down—companies must take a strategic approach to driver feedback.

How Anonymous Feedback Can Help

At their essence, every complaint is about being heard. People want companies to address and validate their concerns. Without a productive outlet for those concerns, drivers will take to the internet—YouTube, Glassdoor and the like—to spread the news about how you did them wrong.

That’s where a powerful anonymous feedback platform can help.

By giving your drivers an anonymous outlet for their concerns, free from retribution, they escape the trap of double deviation. And, with actionable information straight from the road, dispatchers, managers and executives back at headquarters know precisely what needs to be fixed.

In turn, anonymous feedback translates to engaged drivers, lower turnover rates, optimized processes and a better online reputation, free from angry drivers’ Facebook rants and raves.

Take control of your company’s message and win back power from online complaints.

How will your company benefit from an engaged team of drivers? Schedule your free 15-minute evaluation and find out.