How To Make Your Business Accountable To The Public

As a business owner, making your business accountable to the public is one of the proven strategies to ensure the growth and sustenance of your business. Many business owners believe that they hold the public no form of accountability. If you are one of those who hold this view, I hope you change it as it affects your business more than it benefits you.

Previously, I have written on accountability in business and the various persons you need to make your business accountable. Below are links to the articles:

Accountability In Business: What It Is

How To Make Your Business Accountable To Your Customers

How To Make Your Business Accountable To Local Authorities

How To Make Your Business Accountable To Your Employees

Benefits Of Making Your Business Accountable To The Public

Improved Public Perception and Trust

You need the public to have a healthy perception of your brand/business. When the public has a positive perception of your business, it increases the trust they have in your business. Making your business accountable to them will help you in this regard.

It Gives The Public The Feeling Of Collective Ownership

Making your business accountable to the public helps give the public a feeling that the business also belongs to them and not just you. When the public feels this way about your business, they develop a sense of loyalty and commitment to your business.

Increased customer attraction and retention

In the early 2000s, it was rumoured in Nigeria that the Indomie noodles were poisonous and deadly. The rumour did a lot of damage to the Indomie brand until the CEO came on live TV to eat a pack of Indomie. That act alone went a long way in putting off the rumour and enlarged the customer base of Indomie noodles.

Consider The Public In All Your Business Decisions

Many businessmen fail to consider the public while making business decisions. That you can, should not be enough reason for you to site a factory in a residential area.

Making your business accountable to the public starts from where you choose to site your business to the kind of structures you put up. It also involves the way your staff and customers conduct themselves while they are at your place of work.

If you run a business that receives huge vehicular visitors, letting your customers cause a traffic jam on the roads by parking their cars by the road does not show you consider other road users in your business decisions.

As a businessperson, making your business accountable to the public you must

realize entails setting up and operating your business in a manner that does not in any way cause nuisance to anyone.

Educate And Sensitize The Public About Your Business

Take out time to let the members of the public know about your business. No, not sales adverts but education that seeks to tell and show what your business is about and what you are doing.

Contribute To The Development Of Your Host Community

You don’t need to be NNPC or Nigerian Breweries before you can begin to contribute to your host community. Even as a small business owner, you must realize that the presence of your business in a particular area has some level of impact on the community. Find ways to contribute to the improvement and development of the community. This could involve such little things as ensuring the proper disposal of waste from your business and maintain

Make Your Business Culture-Sensitive

Another way to make your business accountable to the public is to ensure that you make your business sensitive to the culture or general beliefs of the public. You must ensure that the public does not come to see your business as a threat to their cultures, beliefs, and general moral leanings. When you fail in this, don’t be surprised when the public organizes themselves through various means to pressure you out of operation.

Closing Thoughts

Making your business accountable to the public will go a long way in helping your business emerge and remain a leader in the industry you are in. Also, it will give you great joy and personal fulfilment knowing that your business is accountable to the public.