Word of Mouth

No doubt, you’ve heard the term: “Word of Mouth.” It wasn’t very long ago when a consumer would seek out information on a company or product by asking friends and associates their opinions about a particular purveyor of goods or services. Basically, the best, and sometimes the only way one could decide whether or not to do business with someone else, was to rely upon “word of mouth.”

Before going out to eat, Joe would ask Jim, “How’s the food at that place?” Ann would tell Marie, “Don’t shop at that store. They didn’t treat me well, at all.” Thus, the commentary network – word of mouth – was personal and vocal, and one generally relied upon a small coterie of well-known, like-minded individuals for a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.”

But now, of course, we’re all connected via the internet and the world-wide-web, and there are many more ways to get information about a business or product other than relying upon word of mouth. Today, we can get the scoop from a variety of sources before entering into a business transaction with another party, simply by logging on and tuning in. “Word of Mouth” has become “Word of Byte.”

For example, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) founded in 1912, is a nonprofit organization focused on advancing marketplace trust. The BBB collects and provides free business reviews on more than four million American businesses, responding to over 123 million requests from consumers, every year. Its website ranks among the top 300 most-visited websites in the United States. That means that people all over the country are consistently checking out companies’ reputations, online, before buying a product or service.

Other websites are devoted entirely to consumer reviews. Perhaps the most famous of these is Yelp.com. Founded in 2004, in San Francisco, Yelp’s website is like a large online bulletin board featuring user-generated content, all geared toward personal reviews based on experiences at local businesses. Anyone with an internet connection can browse the Yelp site. And the reality is, more and more businesses, these days, are thriving or dying based on the types of reviews that appear on Yelp and other sites like it. It’s a very potent tool whose model is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in cyberspace.

In fact, most owner-operated business websites now feature a testimonial section – a place where web surfers can find out what customers who have done business with a company in the past, say about it. And businesses that have clean records, good reviews and/or positive testimonials are much more likely to increase their market share by gaining new customers who have done their research.

At Pacific Mobility, we encourage you to “check us out.” While we’re always happy to tell you, ourselves, that we offer our customers great products, great prices, and great service, you don’t simply have to take our word for it. Visit our website, type in the BBB’s URL, or go online to Yelp. We’re sure you’ll find that others will say the same.