This is a short story of how I denied a business my custom because of good intentioned, but unfavourable word-of-mouth. I have deliberately left out the company name to save them further grief and allow the lessons within to take the focus.
I had the pleasure of choosing what to eat for lunch at a recent festival I attended with my wife and friends. My choice was unhindered allowing me access to an embarrassment of options including dirty burgers, pizza, chicken wraps and all the vegan versions of these too. My wife on the other hand was restricted due to her dietary requirements and therefore a much smaller list of vendors was in the running.
Of the three venues to choose from, two had already been frequented as we had been camped a day already and as you may know, listening to music in a field is hungry work. What looked like a very clean, professional and inviting fast-food vendor, it seemed we had left the best till last.
Before we had chance to read the menu, our good intentioned friend who wished to save us from soiling our spotless morals informed us that they had heard that the owner of the stall had denied sponsorship to someone that was raising money for a transition operation. The sponsorship had been turned down by the owner due to their beliefs about transgender.
On the face of this scant information, an internet black spot and our trustworthiness of our source we decided to boycott the venue for the rest of the weekend. The company lost out on our custom and I lost out on what would have obviously been the greatest food I’d ever tasted.
Although I left the festival wondering what could have been, I eventually got over it and returned to living my best life working at Risk Evolves. I was reminded by a quote our MD sent to us, from a fellow BCorp company.
It suddenly struck me that, I had allowed myself to willingly fall foul of this and needed to research the whole incident to get a better understanding; It hadn’t sat well with me from the start, and this wasn’t just because I had missed out on food.
Helpful to me, but potentially frightening for the fast-food business in question, I found what I was looking for by just Google searching the name of the company; It was not the most flattering of headlines.
It was obvious straight away that the owner and the business had been through the mill as a 7000-word blog was written by the owner on the website detailing the whole situation and giving a full explanation on their personal thoughts and beliefs that led to the trouble. I looked at the date of the post and realised the extent of the reputational damage; It was over two years old. Even two years after the incident, ill-informed word-of-mouth was doing more damage to this company than the incident itself.
The incident started with an email request for fundraising help for transitional surgery. The owner had replied but declined to help on the grounds that due to her own beliefs they felt there were other options than surgery. The owner felt it was only right and fair to the requestee that an explanation be given for the declination. Unfortunately, the email was taken the wrong way resulting in the owner being seen as among other things, transphobic.
The full email was included in the owner’s blog to give context and having read it several times, in my humble opinion I struggle to find anything but good intentions. If anything, they were offering further information about their own beliefs (despite the non-mainstream nature), and why they had made their decision.
- Hearsay and third-party information are merely a notification for further research. We rely on word-of-mouth as one of our organisation’s tools to create awareness and ultimately create opportunities for growth. However, we’re all responsible for our own due diligence. Unless this information comes from a trusted and certified source it requires further investigation before an opinion or a decision can be made.
- Reputation is fragile and not easily repaired once damaged. It takes a long time to build and nurture a good renown for your organisation, often it requires backbreaking dedication and constant monitoring. Every action you and your staff take, every email that is sent must always have the organisation’s best interests at heart. What is the worst thing that could happen if I send this message out? How could this be misunderstood if read by someone who isn’t the original recipient? All it takes is one good-intentioned, but ill-considered communication and suddenly no one is bringing their custom to you
- Strong, documented policies, procedures and processes give better guidance and information. Your organisation’s ability to communicate to its staff through a thoughtful but robust policy that is constantly reviewed and updated is so important. This allows the organisation’s direction, standards, ethics and beliefs to be set out for all to acknowledge before it becomes a surprise.
- Your organisation’s values may be different to that of its people. It is extremely important to remember that the organisation’s values may not be the same as the owner’s or its staff. It is of course acceptable to have opinions and beliefs of your own, but they should not be seen to transcend the values and standards of the organisation that you represent. Policies on email and social media provide a framework to ensure that an individual within an organisation does not cause reputational damage to the organisation or offence to others.
This all sounds like an extreme case but as the story demonstrates, reputational damage isn’t just confined to large organisations, it can happen to smaller organisations as well. If you are part of an organisation or even if you are the owner / c-suite, just muse over the last few emails you have sent and consider how they could be misunderstood and what consequences it would bring; It might save you years of lost custom.
