When I was a small child, my mother took me to a local shoe store at the mall to buy me a pair of new shoes for my birthday. Due to a mistake on the part of the sales clerk, we were sent home with a pair of mismatched shoes. When we returned to the store, rather than apologize for the inconvenience, the clerk who made the error treated my mother rudely and acted as if she was inconveniencing him.
At that point my mother asked to speak to the manager.
Surprisingly, when the manager came from the back room, he too was surly and abusive. My mother proceeded to explain to him (very politely) that due to her poor treatment, she would never, ever shop at their store again. And furthermore, she would tell everyone she knew about their terrible customer service.
True to her word, my mother never entered that store again. There were times when I remember walking past and seeing a pair of shoes in their display window that I desperately wanted, but my mother would not relent. They never got another dime from her.
And at the time, my mother did, in fact, tell her friends about her poor treatment at the shoe store. But without the internet and social media, that word of mouth extended to only about 10 people. Fast forward 30 years. Imagine what she could have done to that store with a Facebook and Twitter account. People who have a bad experience with a company now have the ability to broadcast that experience to hundreds, even thousands, of people all over the world. And they do.
Why Customer Service is One of the Best Marketing Tactics Ever
