The next disaster for your brand may be just around the corner - because disaster is just a few keystrokes away, says Dr Bodo Lang, Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Auckland Business School.
"All it takes is one motivated and connected individual to experience a sub-par performance from your brand and the resulting tsunami could see your brand drowning in a sea of negative online comments," he warns.
This is because unprecedented numbers of New Zealanders go online to tell others when things go sour and more consumers than ever before are there to read, comment, and share this digital word-of-mouth with others.
"This has shifted some of the power into consumers' hands. Occasionally, it has even reversed the typical power asymmetry between large brands and single consumers," he says.
Dr Lang cites the case of disgruntled musician Dave Carroll who wrote a song and created a YouTube video after United Airlines broke his guitar and provided poor customer service afterwards.
In marketing circles this is called a "double deviation"; something that can really get under a customer's skin.
The video and song, aptly named United Breaks Guitars, was an instant hit. Once United Airlines could feel the power shift, it compensated the musician to stem the tide of other consumers sharing their stories of below-par customer service from the airline. At last count the video had nearly 16 million views on YouTube. By some estimates this episode cost United Airlines 10 per cent of its stock price or $US180 million.
"If a brand overpromises and under-delivers, it will suffer the consequences. If a brand has a slipup in customer service and makes a poor comeback, it will suffer the consequences. If a brand makes it difficult for its customers to engage with them, it will suffer the consequences. Such is the power of word-of-mouth, whether online or offline," Dr Lang says.
One global sports technology manufacturer - a former industry leader - disabled its social media presence because of the barrage of negative feedback it was receiving. When social media was disabled, consumers moved to other online platforms, which the company had no control over.
Eventually, the company realised that its position was untenable and opened up its own social media channels again and also worked with greater urgency on fixing the underlying issues - poor product performance - rather than trying to silence its customer base.
"This company's reaction illustrates something that was laid bare in recent research: many businesses are uncertain about how to 'manage' word-of-mouth. Sure, most brands have a young and often sleep-deprived team working on their social media presence.
"However, often such tools are being used in a reactive, rather than a proactive, manner. Moreover, the customer experience is shaped by many touchpoints which are often not driven by marketing, which can be problematic," Dr Lang says.
So how do you manage word-of-mouth? Well, forget about managing word-of-mouth. Managing word-of-mouth gives the impression that it is under the direct control of the marketer.
But it is not. Even the largest brands have less voice in the marketplace than the voices of all its customers combined. So, brands cannot manage word-of-mouth but they can certainly influence it. But how?
"Even in the 21st century the basics to word-of-mouth success, whether online or offline, have not changed: meet or exceed your customers' expectations, do this at every customer touchpoint, be easy to deal with, and perform so strongly so that customers trust your brand.
"In other words, don't view customer-facing functions as a cost, view them as a relationship investment," Dr Lang advises.
He says a good example of a company doing this is Actrix, New Zealand's oldest internet service provider.
"Actrix provides all of its customer service from within New Zealand and chances are that a real person will answer your call within 30 seconds. They also go to great lengths to solve their customers' problems. How is this possible?
"It comes from the top. The CEO, Howard Lewis, is so passionate about his customers that he often answers his customers' questions via social media himself, and he personally delivers a modem a week to a customer to really understand his customers and what they need."
Consequently, Actrix is regularly one of the top-rated internet service providers in Consumer magazine's annual customer satisfaction survey.
"Because Actrix customers are highly satisfied, they engage in much positive word-of-mouth. As a result, Actrix does no traditional advertising. None at all. Now that is power to the people," Dr Lang says.