How to Avoid Reverse Marketing

Whenever one of your dissatisfied customers walks out of your business, hangs up the phone or stops making a transaction while on your website, a “reverse marketing” event has taken place. My definition for reverse marketing is anytime a potential customer meets some negative aspect of your company and has the opportunity to form a negative impression. Reverse marketing doesn’t pay; it costs you big time. It is the wrong kind of marketing.

The Grim Statistics
Over the years, studies conducted, have reported that the average unhappy customer will tell 8-10 other people about the poor service they received from your business or organization. One in five will tell twenty other people.

Twitter, Facebook and MySpace
In today’s world, with the advent of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other internet communication portals, reports of bad service can travel in nanoseconds and reach a global audience. Forget about China, if this bad news is communicated throughout just your own city or region, it could drive your present and potential customers away in droves.

To make sure this doesn’t happen to your business or organization, it would be wise to heed the old saying of “stop, look and listen”. In other words watch what your customers are doing and listen to what they are saying when they are interfacing with your business.

Avoiding Negative Impressions
At the first indication of negative impressions or feedback, start analyzing what is not right. This is where open and frequent lines of communication with your employees can become extremely valuable.

By having open and direct communication with your staff, you make it easy for them to regularly report, rather than hide, their impressions on a regular basis. When you can identify these issues as soon as they become known, you will find they are much easier to resolve.

When you are able to keep reverse marketing to a minimum, your customers and your employees will be much happier and so will you.

If you are interested in a better career in customer service visit www.customerservicejobs.com


Tom Borg is president of Tom Borg Consulting, LLC. He is a business consultant, speaker, coach and author. He helps companies and organization become more profitable by increasing their value and lowering their costs through the professional development of their managers and employees.