I previously wrote in an earlier post evidence showing that word of mouth behaviors from customers are on the rise. You may or may not know this about me, but before I came to NGF, I worked for Enterprise Rent-a-Car. At Enterprise our culture was built around what they called ESQI (Enterprise Service Quality Index). Enterprise’s use of ESQI is cited extensively by Reichheld in “The Ultimate Question.”
Since I had been in the business, I viewed the Youtube video below with great interest. The video shows 20-30 customers waiting at an auto rental counter at the Fort Lauderdale airport. The customers are then abandoned by Hertz as their only employee on duty leaves the counter and closes up for the night. Needless to say, Hertz that night not only created 20-30 detractors, but the additional detractor who had the video camera and posted this video on Youtube. It has been viewed over 2,900 times since January. Based on NGF research we know that 98% of negative referrals will convert to a lost customer. Therefore this video has likely cost Hertz close to 3,000 customers.
With all of the vehicles available today for customers to spread word of mouth referrals (Youtube, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Tripadvisor, World Golf Reviews, ForeLinksters, Bomb Squad Golf, GolfReview, GolfWRX, Greenskeeper, etc.) marketers need to accept that this is today’s marketing model and it’s not going back.
