This morning I was reading a great post by Dwayne Melancon in 100 Bloggers about “Buzz” (the positive kind) and it made me think of how this can go in the opposite direction – a negative Tipping Point, as it were (with thanks to Malcolm Gladwell). It is my worst nightmare as an executive in the service industry – given the viral power of the Internet, one bad customer experience creates a tidal wave of negativity and overshadows all previous painstaking efforts to build a solid reputation. There were two examples of this that appeared in the past week:
- A cable company techinician is videotaped asleep at a customer’s house , along with an accompanying commentary and soundtrack
- A customer simply cannot get a disconnect order processed with a certain ISP – Dan Tudor covers it very well in this post
As Dwayne asked in his post about how once can create and sustain positive buzz, I ask the same question, in reverse: How do you avoid the negative buzz? When bad things happen I don’t think about the particular employee involved; instead, I look to that person’s immediate supervisor. Was that person a good manager, who understood and practiced the policies, values and principles of the organization? Was that person a good teacher? I believe the best way to avoid these troubles is to make sure sound and competent manager/leaders are in place in ALL levels of the organization – a tall order, but very necessary. Otherwise those bad nightmares could come true.
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