Forty years ago, I was assigned a book to read. The name of the book was How to Sell Anything to Anybody. The author’s name was Joe Girard, supposedly the world’s greatest salesman. I have no idea whether he was or not, but he wrote something that has stuck with me all these years later.
He called it Girard’s rule of 250, which went like this. Everybody has 250 people they know well enough to invite to a wedding or a funeral. If you have a client or customer and you do him dirty or mistreat him, he will make it his mission to tell his closest 250 friends and acquaintances.
I have found this to be true. Satisfied clients and customers might tell a few of their friends about you and your outstanding service. But treat them wrong, and they will become positively evangelistic. Something about the human desire for revenge and to get even motivates one to go the extra mile to tell someone of the wrong.
The solution for avoiding this disaster is simple: do everything we can to treat the people with whom we come in contact right.