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Bad Word of Mouth and customer feedback

Written by: Colin Simmons

Article Overview: The Dark Side. Welcome to the dark side.. Bad Word of Mouth is bad news. If you need any evidence we love hearing it, switch on the evening news.

Bad Word of Mouth and customer feedback

The Dark Side

Welcome to the dark side.. Bad Word of Mouth is bad news. If you need any evidence

we love hearing it, switch on the evening news.

Profitable

Bad news can be very profitable if handled carefully and interpreted the right way. A complaint could flag areas of your business worthy of more attention. Once a problem has been identified you are in a position to fix it or manage the issue and limit the damage.

Bad Word of Mouth

The more competitive your industry the less likely it is that you can afford for your customers (or more likely, ex-customers) dissuading others from buying from you. Individuals who have never purchased from you may ward off potential customers with horror stories that increasingly bear little resemblance to the truth.

We all make mistakes

People make mistakes, organisations consist of people therefore it is impossible, no matter how good your systems and training are, not to get it wrong on occasion. If poor performance is not tolerated you may simply never get to hear about it. By allowing your staff to learn from their mistakes you should see an improvement in overall levels of customer service. The quality of service given will often be reflected in your customer’s comments to you and the outside world. Word of Web® (or ‘Wow’) can add to this process by publishing recommendations from your customers and thus helping to counter the effect of any negative comments that may be circulating. Wow can help you to replace the bad news with good.

Full Picture

Listening to complaints and negative feedback is only part of the story. You need to know as much about what your customers really think as possible, the good, the bad and the ugly. A more balanced view will help you to keep the negative feedback in perspective and know how best to proceed.

Let us imagine that your market researchers have told you that 20% of cat owners questioned said they wouldn’t feed their cats your new “MoggyScoff” branded cat food if you paid them. You might feel you have a problem.

If you subsequently discover that eight out of ten owners prefer ‘MoggyScoff’ to every other leading brand, that the research was conducted scientifically without bias and the leading brand preferred over ‘MoggyScoff’ was your premium branded cat food ‘MosmanMogs’, your view might be different. You need to see the full picture before you can draw meaningful conclusions.

Word of Web®

Word of Web® can assist you to obtain customer recommendations and feedback. Word of Web® is word of mouth recommendations on the web. Wow established itself a few years ago focused on the Lower North Shore in Sydney. Since then Wow has grown to embrace most of Sydney and has commenced collecting reviews from exotic places such as Melbourne.

Word of Web® does not publish negative reviews. Worth repeating - we do not publish, disclose, broadcast or otherwise distribute negative reviews. Word of Web® is a source of reliable and quality businesses, we are not looking to scare people away from a business because of what could have been an isolated occurrence. The worst we will do is to cease listing a business on the site. If we receive enough positive feedback we will re-list them.

What happens if you receive a poor review

When we receive a poor review we view it in light of all the other reviews we have received for that business. For example, a customer complained to us that one of our recommended restaurants had embarrassed them during a family lunch. We removed the restaurant from the Word of Web® site. As the customer was unwilling to discuss the incident with the owners directly we obtained a written apology on their behalf and the offer of a free meal. The proprietors are now aware of a problem and are in position to prevent the same thing re-occurring. The complainant has less of an axe to grind. We haven’t re-listed the restaurant on the Word of Web® site but will if we receive enough relevant favourable comment to warrant it.

Customer Feedback

Just about every one of your customers has an opinion about you. Word of Web® is in a position to collate and interpret customer feedback for you and help you make some sense of it. Even when your customers don’t want to respond it tells you something. Most people find providing positive feedback a lot easier than negative. This is less of an issue when dealing with a third party such Word of Web®, particularly if the process is anonymous.

How do you generate customer recommendations and feedback?

1 Set up a link to Word of Web® on your emails and website with an email address (which will be supplied to you) and encourage your customers to send their reviews or feedback. You may wish to add that the review can be an anonymous and any serious issues or problems should still be directed to yourselves.

2. Word of Web® will draft your own web page to complete any gaps in the reviews received and provide additional information and/or a link back to your business’s website.

3 Wow can supply you with its standard review cards or customise them to more closely reflect your business. A sample of the standard card is available at no cost.

4 There is also the direct route. Most customers are happy to respond to a brief "how are we doing" enquiry and may even appreciate being asked.

How much?

Links and emails to Wow - FREE
Publish initial reviews received - FREE
Anything else - Enquire

Turn a Negative into a Positive

Many businesses recognise that Bad Word of Mouth is something to be wary of but essentially try to ignore it. Word of Mouth recommendations and customer feedback are the tools at your disposal to understand and mitigate negative comments and complaints. You can turn a negative into a positive and Word of Web® can help you to do it.

Related Articles
  Word-of-Mouth: The World's Best-Known Marketing Secret
  The Role of Customer Service in Business Success
  Word of Mouth Marketing
  The Power of Word of Mouth
  Talking Behind Your Back is Good

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Related Forum Posts
Measuring Word of mouth - [quote="jvprosperity":2l2ujat4]I couldn't find the Part 1 Doctrine on the site but I believe from reading the blog posts it had to do with the distractions entrepreneurs and their customers face daily. He may have also talked about Word of Mouth and the true way of measuring it.[/quote:2l2ujat4] Hi Andy, So how can one measure "Word of Mouth" marketing then?
Re: What's Up With Word Clouds? - I would like to see Word Clouds used in conjunction with a Survey. I've been experimenting with Word Clouds within Google Docs forms using the advanced Word Cloud Widget.
Word of Mouth - Word of Mouth marketing by its very nature takes time. You need to develop relationships before people will refer you. Why not boost it a little by making a few partnerships? You could partner with a gym or put on seminars. Think who else targets the same people and how you can work with them and help them. You can also write articles and become and expert in your field - put them online, write a column for a community paper on health, etc. Even a door to door flyer drop with a simple one pager can help drive some clients. Good luck!
Build around a customer - Don, there's nothing like building around a customer. Can you work around the problems of someone in your niche market and build a product that fits for them? Under the best case scenario they pay you at least your costs to get the product working so they cover your research and development. But at least you can walk away with valuable customer feedback and a testimonial from someone in the industry who can vouch for you, refer friends, etc.
Empathize with customers - [quote="mphcoach":t5ys84d2]Truth is, to get past a bad customer interaction you really do have to give something extraordinary and memorable. Most importantly, you have to be sincere. Tom Peters has some amazing stories in hos books. In fact, when customers do give great feedback it truly is a gift to you to create a lasting relationship. Four bits of chicken was not a response worthy of your problem. For me, the whole deal needed to be free; you would be invited back for free next time and the manager would have spent quality time with you, listening to what went on and using that as feedback for his team to do better next time.[/quote:t5ys84d2] I agree with mphcoach's comments as Doug Fleener says "Most unhappy customers are reasonable once they feel that the company representative they're talking to understands the problem and is interested in finding a solution that works for both parties...it's important to let her vent her frustrations and tell her story... Some examples of how to empathize with the customer include: 'That must have been incredibly frustrating.' 'I can sure understand why you're so unhappy.' 'I would be frustrated, too.' Then follow the acknowledgement with a transition statement: 'Well, let's see what we can do to make it better.' 'I'm sure we can fix this together.'" (The Profitable Retailer 75 & 76)


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