Do small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) worry enough about their reputation?

I remember my father, the founder of MICROingranaggi, always used to say:

“Never forget it takes years of impeccable work to build a solid business reputation and an entire lifetime to avoid losing it in just five minutes”.

This is so true. Don’t you agree?

It was the 80s and one of the few channels used to promote the reputation of enterprises was by word of mouth.
Nowadays the web (which, whether you like it or not, no-one can escape from) has overturned these aspects and amplified phenomena such as this.
Enterprises are obliged to provide digital customer care services in order to provide real time feedback and responses. There are blogs – some more, some less authoritative – dedicated to every possible topic (even more niche aspects). And, above all,

there are social media that disseminate information at the speed of light which, all too often, simply refer to personal opinions or experiences.

Information that ends up becoming of public domain and, more often than not, taken to be the truth (whether it is or not), with an impact on the business activities of an enterprise that can even lead to its reputation being ruined.

The example of a dear friend of mine comes to mind, who has an excellent and highly frequented restaurant in Milan, where it is impossible (or almost) to find a table even on week days. Despite this, he told me that the first thing he does every morning is to read through all the latest reviews posted about his restaurant on TripAdvisor.
So, in this case, I ask myself whether the “fear” of getting negative reviews can actually impact such a florid business in any way. And my answer was that maybe, in the long term, it can end up modifying the most profound essence and the particularities that have always distinguished the enterprise, in an attempt to satisfy the part of its clientele who decide to give their opinion online.

Of course, in some cases reading the opinions others have regarding your work can be a useful incentive towards improvement, but I don’t think this is always the case. Such as, to give another example, those who post a personal negative review, perhaps stemming from a banal misunderstanding and not expressed in the most appropriate manner. Who reads an opinion or review of this type online and takes the time to check if it is true or not? Or why and by whom it was posted? Or is it simply recorded and that’s that?

I would like to end this post with a question addressed to all of you.

Large enterprises obviously pay extreme attention to their reputation, but what about the SMEs who I believe have the same problem? Do they have suitable strategies in place or don’t they worry about it at all?