The Holy Grail 2007

Today's holy grail in marketing and customer service is word-of-mouth.  What your customers take away from their experience with your business is everything. Those customers now have a much bigger voice than they did just a few years back.  I believe the rule of "a customer will tell 10 friends" about their experience is expired.  When was this rule written? 1999?  Considering the power of the blogosphere, the sheer volume of traffic on networking sites such as MySpace and YouTube and the ability of people to self publish, you should be shaking in your shoes.  Customers can now tell thousands of people about their experiences with a few key strokes and you can no longer afford to hide behind the curtain of "par service".  You need to be excellent, and I know that many of you already are.

I'd like to share an experience that illustrates exactly what I'm talking about when it comes to the tired and expired "Tell 10" rule.  My company is on MySpace and I frequently get messages from people who just need to vent.  My buddy Danny, a friend since high-school, recently wrote about an experience at AMC movie theatres in Grapevine, TX.

"A few years ago my wife and I decided to go see a movie at the AMC (movie theatre) at Grapevine Mills Mall. We paid our ridiculous ticket prices and immediately went to the concession stand. We purchased the typical stuff like drinks and popcorn. I also have a sweet tooth so I picked up a bag of candy. So we find our theater and take a seat. As the previews start i open my candy to find that it is rock hard. No big deal, I'll just return it for another bag right? Well little did I know that this would be the beginning of a nightmare of a customer service issue. I take my candy back to the concession stand and inform the teenager working behind the counter that the candy was apparently old and that I wanted a new bag. I explained to him that it was hard and should not be that way. He promptly told me that the candy was supposed to be that way. Of course I disagreed and explained that I had eaten this many times before and all I wanted to do was exchange it. Well he was not going to do that for me so I requested to see his manager. Well he called his manager who turned out to also be a teenager and I went through the whole thing again. By this point I am starting to get mad because I am getting the same run around. To shorten this lengthy story a bit, when it was all said and done I was retrieving my wife from the theater and was escorted out by security(an off duty police officer). Without being refunded our ticket prices I might add. Needless to say I feel they should have just replaced the bag and it would have been a non issue. Instead what resulted was our night being ruined do to my foul mood and I have never set foot into another AMC theater again."

Can you believe it?  Is a simple bag of candy really worth all that trouble?  Danny had every right to be irritated.  How does this make you feel?  If you're like me, you probably sympathize with Danny and, at least for now, don't have lovey huggy feelings towards AMC. 

Here's the bigger picture: Danny posted this comment on MySpace, the largest social networking site in the world.  And AMC, being a national chain, could suffer much damage from this one comment.  The game has changed and it's not okay to have a bad day, or treat a customer poorly, or stand up on principal based on a bag of candy.  Keep this in mind always because Danny may be the next customer to walk into your place of business.  He cared enough to write to me about it, so do you care enough to make sure he writes good things about you rather than complaints?  And remember, there's not just one Danny, there are 2 million + Dannys out there who have this power and also the power of choice.  Take your customers' complaints seriously.  They only want you to improve, as do I.