Unhappy Customers

An unhappy customer will tell between 9 and 15 people about their bad experience. A whopping 13% will tell more than 20 people.
Source: White House Office of Consumer Affairs, Washington, DC )

For every customer who complains to you, there are 26 other unhappy customers who didn’t tell you about it.
( Source: Lee Resource Inc ).

It takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one negative experience
( Source: “Understanding Customers” by Ruby Newell-Legner )

These are some pretty scary numbers.  If one person complains to you, this means:

  • You actually have 27 unhappy customers
  • Between them, they’ve told maybe 400 others about their bad experience with you

Is this the kind of word-of-mouth advertising you rely on?

Big numbers in Social Media

Worldwide, 62% of adults now use social media.  And they use it a lot.  “Social networking” is listed as the most popular online activity, with 22% of time spent online on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Globally, 50% of people log into Facebook every single day. The average user spends 700 minutes (nearly 12 hours) on Facebook each month.

In Australia, the most popular social network is Facebook, with over 10 million active accounts.  In 2011, approximately 100,000 new accounts were created each month. Over 60% of our online popular are logging in at least once every 30 days.  The largest age-groups are 25-34, followed by 18-24 year olds.

So now you know all these cool numbers. How can you use them to grow your business?

Easy – engage with your customers!  They’re spending heaps of time on social media sites, engaging with their friends and sharing content.  There are more women then men (54% in Australia), and they’re mostly in the age groups with higher disposable income.