The Dark Side of Word-of-Mouth Advertising
The internet, and blogging in particular, offers the ultimate form of word-of-mouth advertising. A new product can be released, friends tell friends from all over the world, and the product can be a big hit.
Of course, the downside is that if your product or service stinks, then those same friends will be influenced not to buy from you, and the internet is full of great examples like this one from the The Patriette about Northwest Airlines and its customer service department.
Indeed, it seems that the vast majority of complaints that I read are the result of incompetent, lazy, or undertrained customer service departments. Another couple of examples: The widely read Gizmodo’s take-down of T-Mobile has convinced me to never, ever purchase a T-Mobile product, and Joe Peacock’s epic 7-part customer service torture session with Dell has made me skittish about buying from them. (Fair warning about Peacock’s post: He does swear on occasion; use a profanity filter.)
So, business leaders, here’s my message to you: Quit treating the customer service like an expense. Quit trying to cut costs by minimizing training budgets and outsourcing overseas. Remember that A) It’s much easier–and cheaper–to keep the customer you have than to get a new one and that B) that customer you offend or irritate can and probably will tell as many people as he or she can.
February 23rd, 2005 at 8:37 am
Thank you! I wholeheartedly believe that customer service should be a very high priority to any company, right up there next to product quality. You could be selling the greatest thing on earth, but if the customers have to go through perdition to get it, it will not sell.
Cell phone companies in general seem to have issues with customer service. What’s the point of having all those stores around if no one in their can help you? I end up having to call the company to get what I want done anyway, and then, they do the whole sorry-let-me-connect-you-to thing, until you give up in frustration.
Makes me mad.
February 28th, 2005 at 12:35 am
Carnival of the Capitalists
Welcome to the Carnival of the Capitalists.
February 28th, 2005 at 11:11 am
Lou Gerstner, former president of American Express, once explained
that customer service stinks because it doesn’t pay–or at least it
does not appear to. Because of the structure of most companies, the
guy who puts in the service operation and bears the expense of
making it first-rate doesn’t get credit for any repeat sales it may
bring. The Marketing staff will say, aha, our marketing plan worked.
The repeat sales may even show up in new product development; the
R&D department will claim that improvements in the product brought
the repeat customers back. But, the company is most unlikely to
attribute the repeat business and its benefit to P&L to sound
customer service.
A second reason why customer service stinks is that the people with
the power to improve it never use it. Robert MacNamara as CEO of Ford
once proposed to omit the spare tire from Ford cars. At the meeting
where he proposed this, he challenged his vice-presidents by asking
how many of them had changed a tire in the past six months? None had.
But, then one of them pointed out that they all had company cars which
were replaced every six months and were serviced in the company garage.
Meanwhile, the average Ford customer drove his car for at least four
years and could reasonably expect to have a flat tire during that time.
If you wonder why auto salesmen are such a pain to deal with, the main
reason is that the executives of his company never have to deal with
one.
February 21st, 2008 at 5:48 pm
The Paradox of Sales Training©…
As you know a paradox is a “statement that seems to conflict with common sense… but nevertheless is true.” (Webster’s II New Riverside Dictionary)…
March 13th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Has anyone out there heard about WideCircles.com. It seems like a way better service then wasting money on PPC. Apparently they are using refering websites ( forums, blogs, wiki, etc. ) and have a viral word of mouth distributed approach to it. My friend told me he got around 100 visits from single post which cost him $0.40c. I am going to give them a try today . In case you are intrested here is it. http://widecircles.com?s=imt1
March 17th, 2008 at 2:10 am
I was reviewing a few viral marketing service and came accross something pretty intresting called WideCircles. They seem to work by sending viral messages to various websites like forums, blogs, wiki’s and so on. My friend signed up for the account the other day after running a small but successful campaign ( targeting very specific niche ) and told me about it. It seems like a nice idea to gather highly relevant traffic and help with the SEO process at the same time while paying very small amount of money compared to pay per click. In any case, I am going to give them a try today. In case you are intrested here is the site. http://widecircles.com?imt=3
March 17th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Has anyone out there heard about WideCircles.com. It seems like a way better service then regular pay per click. Apparently they are using refering websites ( forums, blogs, wiki, etc. ) and have a viral word of mouth distributed approach to it which is engaging rather ther then interrupting customers. My friend told me he got over 500 visits from single post which cost him around $0.40c, within a few days. I am going to give them a try today . In case you are intrested here is it. http://widecircles.com?imt=3
March 17th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
The new distributed viral forum/blog/wiki/classified/etc viral advertising engine is here. Spread the word about your product or service in short amount of time to millions of people. Get residual traffic and increase search engine visibility by using long lasting backlinks. Low cost, no pay per click fraud issues and great ROI. http://widecircles.com?imt=3:roll:
August 14th, 2008 at 7:04 am
I wholeheartedly believe that customer service should be a very high priority to any company.
………………..
GAYATHRI
Social Media Marketing