The "Truth" Is Out There

I hope that every business knows that the bar has been raised.

It used to be that if you had a dissatisfied customer they would tell ten people. With Web 2.0 tools, they can now tell ten thousand. Google shows 13,700 hits for the phrase "Best Buy sucks".

In my previous post, I complained about Best Buy's warranty return process. Just for fun, this morning I tried a search on Technorati. Here's what I found.

Companies had best be warned to pay attention to their process and performance more than ever. Because it's no longer possible to "control the message" or "contain the crisis", once it's out in the web world.

If you haven't yet aligned yourself around customer focus or choose to proactively address service or product issues, it'll be done for you.

And not in a way you'll like.

Your strategy will have to be better than buying up all the "yourcompaysucks.com" domains. You may actually have to search out these people, examine your processes, critique your staff.

Sometimes you'll have to "fire a customer".

Regardless, now would be a very good time to sit down and decide whether you need someone trolling the web, searching for naysayers - to ferret out the unsatisfied and proactively address their concerns.

Because you don't want your reputation to be placed in the hands of others.