Why is reputation management important? Meet your new Reputation Research Teammate
Reputation can take years to build and change overnight. Meet MyTelescope's new Reputation Research Teammate, an expert AI agent that helps you identify reputational risks, understand what people are concerned about and track whether those concerns are growing or fading.
By Rodrigo Pozo Graviz · 2026-10-15
Category: Reputation tracking
Reputation takes years to build but can change overnight. Yet most companies still measure it through surveys conducted once or twice a year.
The problem is that by the time you receive the results, the situation might already have changed.
People don't wait for surveys to express their concerns. They search, ask questions, compare companies and look for answers online. These behaviors can tell us a lot about what people think about a brand and, more importantly, what they are concerned about.
So why aren't we using these signals to understand reputation risk as it happens?
From measuring reputation to understanding reputation risk
Traditional reputation management relies heavily on surveys, media monitoring and social listening.
All of these have their place, but they measure different things.
Media monitoring tells us what is being published. Social listening tells us what people are saying publicly. Surveys tell us what people report thinking at a particular moment.
But what about the questions people are asking when they actively seek information?
Search behavior gives us another perspective. It helps us understand the concerns, uncertainties and questions people have about a company, even when they aren't posting about them publicly.
And when those questions change, it can be an early indication that something is happening to a brand's reputation.
Of course, not every negative question represents a crisis. But understanding the patterns, how quickly concerns are growing and whether they persist, can help communication teams make better decisions.
Introducing the Reputation Research Teammate
At MyTelescope, we've been working on building expert AI agents that understand specific fields rather than relying only on general AI capabilities.
Our latest addition is the Reputation Research Teammate, an agent trained to help analyze reputation and identify potential reputational risks based on what people are searching for and asking online.
Instead of navigating dashboards and interpreting every signal yourself, you can have a conversation with the agent.
For example, you can ask:
What is the reputation of Nike in the US?
What reputation risks are emerging for my company?
Why are people concerned about a particular brand?
Are negative questions increasing or decreasing?
Has a reputation issue blown over, or are people still concerned?
What should our communications team pay attention to?
The goal isn't just to produce another reputation score. It's to help people understand what's happening behind the numbers.
What happens when you ask about Nike?
When we tested the agent with the question, "What is the reputation of Nike in the US?", it identified an interesting pattern.
Nike's reputation risk indicator had been relatively stable until April 2026, when it suddenly dropped to -116.
Even months later, the indicator remained elevated.
What's interesting here isn't just the change itself. It's the ability to investigate what happened, understand which questions contributed to the movement and see whether those concerns have disappeared.
This is particularly important for communication teams.
A crisis might disappear from the news cycle while people continue searching for information about it.
Knowing whether a concern is still present can be just as important as knowing when it first appeared.
From dashboards to conversations and alerts
Another part of reputation management is knowing when something changes without constantly checking a dashboard.
The Reputation Research Teammate can now provide automated reputation risk alerts.
Our first alert highlighted elevated reputational risk for KPMG in Sweden, together with the stories and questions associated with that risk.
The idea is to combine three things: continuous measurement, automated alerts and an expert agent you can ask to investigate further.
An alert tells you where to look. The agent helps you understand what you're looking at.
And ultimately, communication professionals still make the decisions about what to do.
Why we're building expert research teammates
This is also part of a much bigger change we're making at MyTelescope.
For years, we've helped companies understand markets, competitors, categories and brands through behavioral data and Share of Search.
Now we're taking the methodologies and knowledge behind that work and making them available through specialized AI research teammates.
The idea is simple.
Instead of having to know which dashboard to open, which data to analyze and how to interpret it, you should be able to ask a question and work with an agent that understands the subject.
Whether you're researching a market, preparing a brief, evaluating a campaign or understanding reputation risk, we want to make it easier to go from data to decisions.
And importantly, to let people spend more time on judgment, strategy and creativity.
A new MyTelescope is coming
We're gradually moving all MyTelescope users to our new agent-based platform, with the goal of completing the transition by the end of 2026.
All existing work and dashboards will be preserved as part of the move.
We're also moving support and product conversations to our Slack community as we phase out Intercom. It's where users can ask questions, share feedback and get help directly from our team.
We're continuing to release improvements, and feedback from our users will help determine what we build next.
The question isn't just how your reputation is doing
It's whether you understand what's changing, why it's changing and when you need to act.
Reputation management has always required human experience and judgment. Better data and specialized AI can help us make that judgment with a much clearer understanding of what's happening.
That's what we're working towards with the Reputation Research Teammate.
Explore the new MyTelescope and start a conversation with your Reputation Research Teammate.