What Are Your Customers Saying

In looking at all the available research data about customer and client behavior, we found that on the average a satisfied customer will tell about three other people about his satisfaction with a particular product, service, place of business or company.

That's often called word-of-mouth advertising and is widely recognized as the most effective kind of advertising of all. Think about it ? doesn't a trusted friend's recommendation or opinion about a place of business carry more weight in influence with you than all other types of advertising that business or its competitors may do.

Obviously what a customer says about a business can have great affect on other people. From a positive standpoint it's possible for this word-of-mouth advertising to make a big contribution to the growth of a business.

Consider this little math game. If one happy customer creates three more who each create three who each create three who each create three who each create three who each create three you've got 2,217 customers.

This story has a flip side though. The same research indicates that on the average a dissatisfied customer gripes to eleven other people. This shouldn't be surprising. Bad news or negativity seems to spread faster and farther than good news.

When you're irritated, annoyed or disappointed with a business you probably tend to tell that story to a lot of people too. This negative or critical word-of-mouth advertising is powerful also. It can stop people from doing business with a company who might otherwise have done so.

If you want to think about this in shear numbers it only takes one dissatisfied customer to wipe out the positive affect in the marketplace of four satisfied customers. All this only serves to reinforce the obvious? it's very desirable for you to do everything possible to insure that its customers have satisfactory experiences whenever they call, come in or transact business.