Brands should make complaining to them easy and satisfying

Because if they dont get it off their chest to you, they will tell others.

From Knowledge@Wharton (shool of Business)

No surprises here, but neverthless and excellent piece about the power of word of mouth - in this case about retail experience, but surly just as valid for any service business (from financial services to hospitality)

"When consumers have a bad shopping experience, they are likely to spread the word, not to the store manager or salesperson, but to friends, family and colleagues.

Overall, if 100 people have a bad experience, a retailer stands to lose between 32 and 36 current or potential customers. These are some of the conclusions of The Retail Customer Dissatisfaction Study 2006, conducted by The Jay H. Baker Retailing Initiative at Wharton and The Verde Group, a Toronto consulting firm, in the weeks before and after Christmas 2005.

according to new Wharton research, such word-of-mouth communication should be a big cause of concern to retailers.

Results of The Retail Customer Dissatisfaction Study 2006 -- conducted by The Jay H. Baker Retailing Initiative at Wharton and The Verde Group, a Toronto consulting firm, in the weeks before and after Christmas 2005 -- show that only 6% of shoppers who experienced a problem with a retailer contacted the company, but 31% went on to tell friends, family or colleagues what happened. Of those, 8% told one person, another 8% told two people, but 6% told six or more people. "Even though these shoppers don't share their pain with the store, they do share their pain with other people, apparently quite a few other people," says Hoch.

The complaints have an even greater impact on shoppers who were not directly involved as the story spreads and is embellished, researchers found. Almost half those surveyed, 48%, reported they have avoided a store in the past because of someone else's negative experience. For those who had encountered a problem themselves, 33% said they would "definitely not" or "probably not" return. "This storytelling has even more impact on the people the story is told to than the people who told the story," says Hoch. The data is based on a survey of 1,186 shoppers.