EZlocal Employee Interview—Featuring Reputation Manager Eddie Hokinson
Dec 17
Meet one of the chillest dudes in the office, our Reputation Services Manager, Eddie Hokinson! He's the one that helps to increase communication between your business and clients, with the personality to establish a positive relationship, and the finesse to cool down a heated situation. A strong voice as far as reputation goes, he did admit that he finds it difficult to talk about himself. Luckily, chatting with him is still a breeze.
Q: What does a typical day look like?
A: Typically, I spend the most of my morning reading and responding to reviews on behalf of our clients and for EZlocal. For the negative reviews, I will contact the client, usually via email, and discuss it with them. I'll then help them create an appropriate response that explains their side, apologizes for the mistake, and offers to reach out to the reviewer to rectify the situation. Aside from responding to reviews, the rest of my day is filled with doing odd jobs such as processing cancels, answering customer service emails about questions on our listing website, and helping the web team by setting up websites.
Q: What is the biggest challenge of the job?
A: There are a couple of challenges I face. When it comes to positive reviews it's mostly trying to switch up the responses so that they are not all the same. Speaking directly to the reviewer in the response to let them know that their review was read helps with making sure that you are not just saying the same thing in every response. Another challenge is responding to negative reviews for customers and being a middleman. Business owners tend to take negative reviews personal and it is my job to make sure they understand that you responding to a negative review not only to the reviewer but any future client that is looking at their reviews before deciding to go with that company or not. Every situation and review is different. Sometimes a simple apology and offering to reach out to them is all it takes. Other times you might want to use a sentence or two to explain yourself. Either way, the rule of thumb is to keep it short and sweet. Apologize for your mistake and hope that you can fix it, If not, future customers at least see that you did your best to reach out to a dissatisfied customer and not just ignore it.
Q: What keeps you "unboring" (what are some fun things you like to do outside of work)?
A: I'm a very chill person. Many days can be seen as boring to most people. Just hanging with some friends and watching a game, playing video games, or listening to new music usually satisfies me. When I do go out, I enjoy seeing live music around the city, checking out new places, and bowling.
Q: What are some advice to business owners to keeping their reputation in good standing?
A: Respond to any and all reviews that you can. Just a simple thank you and using a key word in the review can along way in your ranking. As I've stated above, maybe the most important thing to do is to not ignore or try to argue with a person for a negative review. Apologize and offer to reach out to rectify the situation. In most cases it won't work but you show future customers that you are active and care about your customers, which can go a long way.
Q: What do you want for Christmas?
A: Peace, love, and understanding.... and I guess a Nintendo Switch.
