Companies love word of mouth advertising. It is by far the best and most efficient way to spread the good news about products and services. But what happens when someone is dissatisfied? Now we may all say, one bad customer experience isn’t the end of world. But what if it was? It’s well known that people talk more about the experiences they’ve had with companies that are negative than positive. Negative experiences as a customer tend to leave a bad taste in the back of our mouths that we are itching to let loose and gab to the world about. No matter how many satisfactory previous encounters we may have had with a restaurant or retail store, one incident will forever alter our opinion on that establishment.
Not only is this well known among business students but it was actually studied. The Nocebo Effect, very similar to the placebo effect which is what happens when people are given sugar pills instead of real test medication and start to think and feel like they are experiencing a negative side effect when in fact they are just imagining it. The implication for brands and marketers is similar: if people have reason to expect problems with your product or service, perhaps due to the complaints of other customers in social media, they may experience or report those same problems – even when they don’t exist! The implication for brands and marketers is similar: if people have reason to expect problems with your product or service, perhaps due to the complaints of other customers in social media, they may experience or report those same problems – even when they don’t exist!
A study was conducted in a restaurant where actors were hired to complain about the soup dish at the establishment; the same soup that was being served to other neighboring tables. After the initial complaint to the waiter by the actors, 26% of the customers in the restaurant made similar complaints, so either they had extremely sensitive tongues or they had been influenced by the initial complaint. The moral of the story is, word travels fast, it’s important to nip a complaint in the butt with apologies and profound empathy toward the customer will stop the contagion before it gets to zombie apocalypse levels. Remember the customer is always right and even if they aren’t right, they need to be treated and felt like their opinion matters before you are in a hole so deep you could touch China on the other end.
