09 January 2012

I bet you didn’t know there was such an organisation as the ‘Word of Mouth Marketing Association UK’. But I’m grateful to Steve Barton (its president, no less) for the following information: “Most word of mouth conversations take place offline. Some 71% is face-to-face, 21% over the phone and only 8% online”.

He’s trying to make the point that, in all the excitement about social media, we shouldn’t ignore the offline bit – and he’s right. But the point about online ‘word of mouth’ is that it can spread far further and far quicker than any conversation down the pub.

Here’s a tale about my friend Jeanette who was in a well-known department store during the post-Christmas sales. She was ready to spend a considerable amount of money (believe me, I know she means ‘considerable’!) but decided not to because “the snotty assistant seems to have no idea of the concept of service”.

How do I know that, even though she lives miles away from me? Because she posted about it on her Facebook page. I also know the name of the department store and the reaction from Jeanette’s 174 other friends on Facebook – many of whom live close enough to use the same store.

The good news is that, 24 hours later, she got a phone call from the store to apologise. Their social media monitoring service had picked up the comment and responded accordingly.

Stewart Niblock, chief executive of autotorq, has a similar tale about appalling service from a franchised dealership just before Christmas. You can read more about it later this week in his column in Auto Retail Bulletin (call Emma on 01572 724687 if you’re not a subscriber).

To date, Stewart has resisted the urge to ‘name and shame’ the dealership concerned but he has Tweeted about the new dealership he’s move to. Will the old one care? On current form, probably not.

The point is: we all know about the power of word of mouth (both online and offline) but how many of us are doing anything about it. It’s a topic we shall return to for our Web Workshops towards the end of March.

Meanwhile, just make sure you know what your customers are saying about you.

Rupert Saunders

Got a view on this? Contact me at rupert@auto-retail.com or just use the comment facility below.

Tags: customer service, facebook, word of mouth, word of mouth marketing association uk