Dangerous Predicaments That Can Damage Your Business
Making it in the business world isn’t all about having a stellar idea, in fact, it is largely about how well you can run your company once it has been set up. That is why all business owners need to be aware of the threats to their company and how to deal with them before they cause serious problems. With this in mind read on to find out about some of the more common ones, and what you can do to stop them in their tracks or even prevent them all together.
Low morale
Low morale is a predicament that you don’t want to occur in your business because it can be very damaging to productivity and even have a knock-on effect on staff retention. Low morale often occurs when staff feel under appreciated or put upon without any recognition for their hard work. The best way of dealing with this is to try to prevent it in the first place by ensuring you are realistic about your demands on staff and offering an additional reward and praise system to show your appreciation.
This is valuable to the long-term success of your business because once a culture of low morale has set in it can be particularly difficult to turn around, with longer-serving employees infecting new ones with their behaviors and creating a whole culture of unrest. Something that is very hard to manage productively and can even lead to people leaving due to the negativity. This, of course, means that as a company you have to deal with the predicament of finding new people and risk losing them too, all because of a negative culture.
Fraud
Fraud is a massive issue in business that can be damaging to both you and your customers. This is partly because there are so many different types that you have to protect against. There is identity fraud where someone gains access to your companies details and uses this to access credit in your name. To deal with this, it’s vital that you have secure processes for your online and offline data, protecting it from wood be fraudsters.
Then there is payroll or accounting fraud where the problem arises in your own company, and the person paying the wages or bills is siphoning off money to themselves. To protect from the type of fraud a mixture of double checking processes and fair payment of staff can help give you a belt and braces approach.
Lastly, there is fraud committed by those buying from you where they claim to be someone other than they are. This is a particularly dangerous type of fraud because it highlights the weakness in your company’s security systems, as you have not caught the fraudsters. Something that in turn can really harm your business’s reputation and make customers think twice about spending money with you. Luckily, identity verification is now simpler than ever before using online and smartphone compatible services. Something that means this type of fraud can be prevented at the point of sale, keeping your businesses reputation intact and preventing a PR disaster.
Bad feedback
Next, a predicament truly seen as dangerous in these internet connected times is receiving bad feedback online about your product or service. After all, it is common practice for customers when making small or large purchases to check out the reviews before they buy. That means it’s essential that you work on your products and customer service standards to ensure this happens as little as possible. Although, in the real world there will always be some issue that you can’t foresee and the occasional thing that goes wrong. Remember though, that a change in perspective can help transform such predicaments from being disasters to positive situations.
A one-star review doesn’t have to be a disaster.
To do this all you need to remember is that a bad review is a perfect place to demonstrate that you care about your customer’s experience and opinions. You can show this by replying in a respectful and conciliatory manner, stating that you have addressed their concerns and have taken steps to prevent them from happening again, as well as offering some compensation if they contact the company privately. This then transforms a dangerous predicament that could put potential customers off buying your brand into an opportunity to show that while you are not perfect, your business does care about each and every one of the people that buy from you. Something that will surely encourage more people to buy, and rather than damage your business, will work in its favor.
