Word of Mouth: Marketer’s Best Friend?
Did you ever have a customer experience that went so badly in one store but so well in another? Did it make you wonder where the disconnect was? How could two stores selling the same basic merchandise do such different jobs in customer satisfaction? And did you tell your friends afterwards? One woman had such an experience, and the results are truly telling when it comes to providing stellar service.
It seems this young woman was waiting in line at a well-known department store and couldn’t help but overhear the conversation of three people in front of her. One woman was complaining about her experience with an equally well-known car dealership. While at the dealership, she commented to the manager that she would like to look at cars without a salesperson popping up in front of her every 10 seconds. His response was, “That’s our policy.” Upon which, the woman walked out. She then went to another well known dealer, where she had a similar experience. The gentleman in the group then commented on a dealership he went to recently. He questioned his logic in going there because of their astoundingly bad TV commercials. Once there, he had an equally bad experience. However, he did find a car he liked and he purchased it. To his surprise, he got a call from the salesman shortly thereafter, asking him to bring the car back to renegotiate the price, because they had made an error in the price. That gave everyone in the group a good laugh. And it caused the 3rd person in the group to comment she was not surprised this had happened, since their commercials were so badly done.
With women responsible for more than 46% of all cars purchase, translating into $80 billion of business, you think car dealers would wake up and smell the pleather. But the truth is, this scenario can be applied to any business, anywhere. Word of mouth can make or break your success and the public’s image of your brand. In this example, it was only 3 people talking in the group. But what happens when those 3 people tell three others, and so forth? The damage could be irreparable. And yet, so many companies continue to avoid the strategies that could boost their image simply because of cost.
At the end of the day, isn’t it much less costly to do the things necessary to foster excellent customer experiences, from training to customer feedback and mystery shopping, (just to name a few), rather than risk the tarnished image of bad word of mouth?
Tags: Customer Experience, customer service, david rich, icc, icc/decision services, mystery shopping, retail