The power of public opinion

[Artashes]

Web Hosting, being an extremely competitive marketplace, have plenty of examples of companies that neglect serving their own paying customers with integrity, outstanding level of communication and by providing quality products and services. Reasons for that are numerous, but we will not go into them.

Instead, I will just mention that one recent study, published in Harvard Business Review by Hart, Heskett and Sasser, found that "[c]ustomers who have bad experience tell approximately 11 people about it."

The Internet, however, has allowed many unsatisfied with service customers reach up to several hundred people with one single complaint, which makes environment for e-business industry more tougher.

Now, is this the worst possible sort of advertising or what? To prevent such problems, companies have been expending a great deal of effort to reduce "defects" in their services by using what is called a quality of conformance or quality management, in other words. I will talk more about proven ways to minimize the number of such defects in hosting services in my future posts.

In the meantime, the lesson of this post should be to never underestimate the power of public opinion, because ignoring negative customer feedback could and will cost You and Your company enormously in the end.


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You are welcome to leave your comments, suggestions, ideas either privately through PM or e-mail or by posting below.

Best,

 

[HostKookster]

I think the biggest problem plaguing most internet service companies is the lack of necessary communication. You see it everyday - internet service companies that don't let their clients know what's going on. With all this new technology we're producing, like VoIP, Online Chat Systems, fail over email systems you'd think communication would drastically improve. But it's only gotten worse....Spam fills our boxes, Spam blockers block out legitimate email, Hackers still have the upper hand when it comes to the majority of the internet population, identity Theft is rampant, the selling of private information continues to go on behind closed doors....I could go on and on....It only hinders our ability to reach people.

The internet has allowed everyone to tap into international markets that were once unavailable to only the largest companies in the world. With that responsibility came all these other problems, that we have yet to solve. The Internet is not standardized, nor should it be - it's the pinnacle of free expression, and with this free expression there will always be abusers of this freedom. That will never change, just like people abuse the law.

The internet has become a place of free reigning capitalism - so somehow the internet public must find a way to make it unprofitable for these abusers to continue abusing the system.....and we all know such an answer is not easy.

 

[TheOrbit]

Public Opinion is very hard to manage however. How many forums like HD are out there where people can bash their company (even without proof). How many places can the company find in time in order to defend themselves as well? Public Opinion doesn't seem to play that much of a role in my personal belief. Yes it can crush a company but the company can bump up some good advertisements and sales and get customers to come. I've seen this little dance happen throughout the internet a lot unfortunatly.

 

[HostKookster]

The internet is such a big place, not everyone will read that bad review of the company, and will still sign up. It's not like you have picketers outside your door protesting your business practices. You just need to continue advertising and people will continue showing up. The place a bad review hurts is in the renewals and referrals of word of mouth advertising that all your clients do for you.

 

[Website Rob]

Public Opinion has always played a big part in almost anything. It still holds true as well, the spoken word is more powerful than the written word -- except in litigation of course.

That is why it makes good sense to focus on current Clients and keeping them happy, rather then worrying about bad publicity elsewhere. This is so true for Web Hosting in particular and posts people make in Forums. As already mentioned, one person can make unfounded complaints about any Hoster and without any further checking, some people will take it at face value. Such is the way of the World.

BTW, it seem people are speaking less with each other. Joe Gerard, "world's greatest salesman" 5 years in a row by Guinness World Book of Records, had said people will tell at least 25 others, of something bad that happened to them.

 

[CrazyTech]

Public Opinion can honestly make or break your company.

 

[HostKookster]

Public Opinion has always played a big part in almost anything. It still holds true as well, the spoken word is more powerful than the written word -- except in litigation of course.

That is why it makes good sense to focus on current Clients and keeping them happy, rather then worrying about bad publicity elsewhere. This is so true for Web Hosting in particular and posts people make in Forums. As already mentioned, one person can make unfounded complaints about any Hoster and without any further checking, some people will take it at face value. Such is the way of the World.

BTW, it seem people are speaking less with each other. Joe Gerard, "world's greatest salesman" 5 years in a row by Guinness World Book of Records, had said people will tell at least 25 others, of something bad that happened to them.

It is 10 times easier to resell a current client than it is to get a new one, so it really pays in time and effort to do whatever you can to keep your current clients happy.

 

[ldcdc]

BTW, it seem people are speaking less with each other. Joe Gerard, "world's greatest salesman" 5 years in a row by Guinness World Book of Records, had said people will tell at least 25 others, of something bad that happened to them.

That may be true, but from my old days of reading marketing stuff on the net from all kind of marketing gurus, I had it in my head that the figure is around 10, so that 11 mentioned by Artashes is very close to that. Perhaps it varies with each business and 11 is the overall average.