One Unhappy Customer Can Multiply

November 8, 2005 by Dane | 0 Comments
In Customer Service

On Strike.   Photo by sectionz.

Austin Business Journal:

What if you hired a national moving company to transport your household possessions to your new home halfway across the country and the truck, the driver, and your possessions were “lost” for three month?

That’s precisely the predicament Robert Leone found himself in during the late 1970s when he moved from Minneapolis to Austin to join the marketing faculty at the University of Texas.

Leone hired an attorney, took his case to court, and won. In the end, the moving company met all of Leone’s requirements for settlement but one: It refused to give him a letter of apology.

Leone began exhibiting the classic symptom of a dissatisfied customer. He told people — lots of people — about his experience. In fact, Leone made a point of telling his story to each of his introductory marketing classes at the university. And each year at Christmas, Leone would send a Christmas card to the president of the moving company, and include a “running total” of how many people he had told thus far. Leone continued this tradition for 10 years. Upon hearing of the president’s pending retirement, Leone sent his final Christmas greeting. The number on the card: 3,503.

Photo by sectionz.

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