Cheap Rates Hotel - Customer Reviews Online Can Make or Break Your Business

Those who fail to grasp this new reality will fall. Those companies that realize this will rise. We live in the Age of the Empowered Consumer.

Upset customers can share their anger with the world, today. A professor said that a disgruntled consumer shares a negative buying experience with ten times as many people as a positive one, when I studied marketing in the early 1990s.

And unhelpful at making alternate arrangements, unsympathetic to their plight, and they were miffed at finding themselves confronted with a desk clerk who was decidedly unapologetic about the mix-up, they were chagrined to discover that the rooms had long since been assigned. Texas where they had arranged guaranteed reservations, two men arrived at a Doubletree Club Hotel in Houston, late in the evening of November 2001.

They encouraged the recipients to spread the word, on the last PowerPoint screen. That was it. And one of their mothers-in-law, two friends, " They sent the presentation to the hotel manager. The two men used Microsoft's PowerPoint software to prepare a humorous graphic complaint entitled "Yours is a Very Bad Hotel, to express their displeasure.

Imagine what this negative exposure cost the Doubletree in terms of its reputation and lost reservations. The PowerPoint presentation was forwarded millions of times around the world and got prominent coverage in publications such as The Wall Street Journal and Forbes, within a few months.

It's free to use while in other cities membership costs $4.95 a month or $49 a year, and in some areas, it serves 124 metropolitan areas. Check out Angie's List (www.angieslist.com), from insurance agents to clowns who perform at birthday parties, for reviews of just about any kind of service provider. It's even easier for people to express frustration with a product or service that doesn't meet their expectations, in 2006.

He's colorblind - so don't let him advise you on what to paint the bathroom, and there is a comment section where you can learn that while Bob is a terrific plumber. Punctuality and friendliness, are graded by parameters including workmanship, for instance, contractors. The reviews follow a standard format that looks like a school report card. 000 nationwide, who number 500, members of Angie's List have access to a database of opinions that are posted by other members.

Many cities have local websites that give consumers a place to vent, in addition. And Epinions (www.epinions.com), trip Advisor (www.tripadvisor.com), city Search (www.citysearch.com), craig's List (www.craigslist.com), others with a national presence include the Better Business Bureau (www.bbb.org). Angie's List is just one of many sites aimed at soliciting consumer reviews.

There are now 70 million blogs and many contain entries about poor products and service, the largest blog search engine, according to Technorati (www.technorati.com). An irate consumer can also write about a negative experience with your company on a blog.

And PayPal (www.paypalsucks.com), home Depot (www.homedepotsucks.com), some good examples of this can be found at websites lodging complaints against Walmart (www.walmart-blows.com). Truly tweaked and technologically-savvy consumers can easily develop a website to communicate their displeasure to the world.

Your failure to assuage the complainer and to prevent similar incidents from occurring might cause the next "Yours Is A Very Bad Business" message to go around the world, while it might be tempting to ignore customer complaints when you have concerns that seem more pressing.

You are not only doing the right thing but also ensuring that your business will grow through positive word-of-mouth, by taking good care of your customers.