One bad tweet can cost you 30 customers

We have probably all heard how Dave Carroll’s song about United Airlines breaking his guitar received 4 million hits. Well a recent study has tried to quantify this Twitter effect more generally. For more information on press coverage see the links:

One Bad Twitter ‘Tweet’ Can Cost 30 Customers, Survey Shows

Can Twitter solve customer service hell?

Companies hurt by angry bloggers

Silent majority risk worse customer service as companies monitor Twitter, Facebook

This is one of the first times I have seen such an attempt to quantify the Twitter effect: true it is survey based but the basic concept of a silent attrition, that customers see a bad review and switch companies without complaining (Frank Sherlock) is a good one. Indeed a similar notion has also been expressed by Cherry Tree research in Experience: source Responsetek (white paper: how to increase bottom line profits by improving customer experience). The base concept here is that while 22% receive a poor experience only 2% actually complain i.e., 98% of dissatisfied customers never complain with 55% at risk and 45% actually defecting.

The Convergys research does seem however to go further by focusing on the switching effect at an earlier browsing for information stage. This makes the social media effect even more important if you are also losing customers you never realized ‘you could have had’.

This also means experience-wise there is a much stronger emphasis in the market of seeking peer review: the start of an experience is now much more likely to be when you log-on.

Would be interested to know of any other quantifications out there or opinions: is this an overblown effect?

Steven Walden

By Steven Walden | Published: January 21, 2010