Many of you, especially in small business may shout of course not, that is rubbish as customer care is at the centre of small business marketing.
Over the past few weeks, I have noticed there seems to be more posts, comments and tweets about bad clients and bad customers.
Doing a few internet searches I found there were:
- 40 million results in Google for bad customers
- 31 million results in Google for bad clients
The good news is that there are more results for good clients and customers. However if this is a growing trend will bad overtake good?
Judgements
What we say or how we express our opinions is becoming increasingly visible and customers are making judgements, forming opinions and perceptions on what they see on the net.
As small businesses are known to care about their customers, it was interesting that most of the results in the search were by small businesses. You also only have to go on Twitter and type in “bad clients” or “bad customers” in the search box and see the results yourself.
Perhaps we forget this sometimes and just vent frustrations. The same of course can be said about customers who openly complain about companies and are actually shooting the messenger who does not make the policies.
No one is perfect
I am not saying that customers are perfect or always right or that you should stick with bad customer relationships. As in our personal relationships sometimes our values clash, we fall out, we are moving in different directions or the relationship is not mutually beneficial. When this happens it can be a time to move on for both parties.
The reason for the post and I will state I could be wrong but it seems many who have written or said things about their customers may be “shooting themselves in the foot”. You just never know if a potential customer is reading or seeing negative comments or posts.
Even worse a current customers may actually realise it is them you are writing about and that could affect your business. Could you imagine how you would feel if someone wrote negative things about you for all to see and others joined in agreeing with the author?
What is your opinion, am I wrong in my perception that this seems to be a trend or is it just a case of people getting tired after a tough year?
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