Thou Shall Listen to Thy Customer

One of the best ways to improve customer service as a whole is to listen to what stories customers are telling about your company, whether it be good or bad. Becky Carroll reminds us in this post on Customers Rock! that a satisfied customer will recommend a company's product or service to 3 people, while an unhappy customer will tell 3000 people (clearly exaggerating, but you get the drift). Customer reviews are crucial to the survival of businesses. When was the last time you checked out forums, blogs, discussion boards, and other social media to see what customers are saying about your company? We've discussed in a previous post how the use of the social media site Twitter could be used to make customer service proactive instead of reactive, but I'd like to see other examples of how companies have improved their services by scouring the web for consumer insights, complaints, and recommendations.