Customer Service is Where Marketing Begins
A recent and horrifying article in the New York Times told the story of a business (DecorMyEyes dot com) and the proprietor Vitaly Borker. The business owner bragged about the strategy of delivering terrible customer service in order to drive more online complaints that would include links to his site and thereby drive his site rank and traffic up in Google.
Mr. Borker's craptastic attitude has come home to roost as Google has now cut off any avenue of benefit that he claimed to experience. You can see the official Google blog post here.
In addition to calling himself out as a moron, Vitaly has given us all a chance to further internalize the fact that a narrow minded strategy that feels wrong can never work out in the long run.
Customer Service is Where Marketing Begins
I'm a big believer that delivering superb customer service is the number one thing that any business can do to ensure its long term success. In today's world, this means extending your ears and engagement with customers onto the Internet.
I have posted on this topic extensively including a good set of video examples last holiday season in my post Give the Gift of Superb Customer Service.
Delivering exceptional customer service in the world of social media and "consumers as publishers" creates a virtuous cycle to bring both repeat business as well as referrals in the modern version of word-of-mouth marketing. It can be a big accelerator for any business.
Negative reviews and crappy customer service will be amplified just as powerfully and, as will be seen by DecorMyEyes, bring business to a grinding halt.
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