Power to the People

Had a bad experience? Tell anyone who will listen about it.

Had a wonderful experience? Tell a few close friends about it.

This is nothing new.

This was our nature before the internet.

“Consumers will tell others about their customer service experiences, both good and bad, with the bad news reaching more ears. Americans say they tell an average of nine people about good experiences, and nearly twice as many (16 people) about poor ones – making every individual service interaction important for businesses.”  Source: RetailCustomerExperience.com August 2011.

Because of my activity online, I write words of praise and also share words of shame that sometimes results in action from the offending companies and thank yous from those that I’ve recommended.

I chronicled my experience with Arby’s not getting the price right and followed up with how they fixed the problem.

I shared the crazy JCPenney email opt out policy.

I wrote about Idiotic QR Coding being paid for by our tax dollars.

But you don’t need your own website to spread the word.

Seth Godin wrote about what the internet has done to increase this word of mouth over the years.

I call it giving Power to the People via social media and a few related websites.

Many people use their Facebook pages, others use Twitter and FourSquare.

I recently wrote a couple of reviews on Trip Advisor.

The 1st one was a glowing review of a hotel I stayed at in Michigan.

The next one though was a warning:

Reviewed February 16, 2012