Sometimes, what you do is done as well as it can be done. It's a service that people truly love, or a product they can't live without. You're doing everything right, but it's not remarkable, at least not in the sense of "worth making a remark about."

What's up with that?

Here's a smorgasbørd of reasons:

1. It's embarrassing to talk about. That's why VD screening, no matter how well done, rarely turns into a viral [ahem] success.
2. There's no easy way to bring it up. This is similar to number 1, but involves opportunity. It's easy to bring up, "hey, where'd you get that ring tone?" because the ring tone just interrupted everyone. It's a lot harder to bring up the fact that you just got a massage.
3. It might not feel cutting edge enough for your crowd. So, it's not the thing that's embarrassing, it's the fact they you just found out about it. Don't bring up your brand new Tivo with your friends from MIT. They'll sneer at you.
4. On a related front, it might feel too popular to profitably sneeze about. Sometimes bloggers hesitate to post on a popular source or topic because they worry they'll seem lazy.
5. You might like the exclusivity. If you have no trouble getting into a great restaurant or a wonderful club, perhaps you won't tell the masses because you're selfish...
6. You might want to keep worlds from colliding. Some kids, for example, like the idea of being the only kid from their school at the summer camp they go to. They get to have two personalities, be two people, keep things separate.
7. You might feel manipulated. Plenty of hip kids were happy to talk about Converse, but once big, bad Nike got involved, it felt different. Almost like they were being used.
8. You might worry about your taste. Recommending a wine really strongly takes guts, because maybe, just maybe, your friends will hate the wine and think you tasteless.
9. There are probably ten other big reasons, but they all lead to the same conclusions:

First, understand that people talk about you (or not talk about you) because of how it makes them feel, not how it makes you feel.

Second, if you're going to build a business around word of mouth, better not have these things working against you.

Third, if you do, it may be a smart strategy to work directly to overcome them. That probably means changing the fundamental DNA of your experience and the story you tell to your users. "If you like us, tell your friends," might feel like a fine start, but it's certainly not going to get you there.

What will change the game is actually changing the game. Changing the experience of talking about you so fundamentally that people will choose to do it.

The other day, a big company sent me an email, asking for feedback about my recent purchase experience.

That's the good news. Even though sites like SurveyMonkey have made it ridiculously inexpensive (and easy) to gather and calculate quantitative customer feedback, I'm rarely asked for feedback. When a request arrives, I always consider it.

The bad news is that this particular company's web-based survey was too long. Some of its questions backed me into a corner. And it didn't ask me the most important question of all: would I recommend them.

I almost gave up after the second question: "How long has it been since you last used our service? Less than 2-3 months, Less than a year, 1-2 years, 3-4 years, More than 5 years." (I continued, knowing it might make for a good blog post.) I couldn't remember the last time I used them, but "I don't know" wasn't an option for that question, nor any others. Memory isn't factory sealed. Besides, what bearing does it have on my recent experience?

I trudged through some 15 pointless questions, dying to give up after each one. The things we do for blogging.

"Would you use us again?" the survey finally asked.

I don't know, I thought. Yes or no were the only answer options.

Well now. The product was good, but the service was pretty bad. If I found a viable alternative, I'd switch. So I answered no. It wasn't the correct answer but backed into a corner, why say yes? The answer is not always binary.

The survey concluded by asking me my age, income, gender, etc. Questions that help ensure survey drop-off rates.

What the survey never asked: If I'd recommend the company, and what I'd say if I did (or how I would recommend against them). This national company, known for its transportation solutions, squandered a free opportunity to understand word of mouth.

Which leads us to what a good survey does to gather valuable customer feedback:

1. Its first question is: "Based on your recent experience with us, would you recommend us to your friends, family, colleagues, etc.?" Yes, no, or I don't know are the possible answers. (You could use the Net Promotoer methodology here, too.)
2. Based on the answer to question 1, the survey then asks, "Tell us more about the reasons for your previous answer." Then I could select from a pre-determined list of reasons for my answer, or blank boxes for me to write my own.
3. It would ask me how I would describe the company and/or my experience to friends and colleagues. Again, a list of possible answers could be presented along with a blank field for my own description.
4. Finally, it would ask me how the company could improve. I could rank the importance of specific items or provide my own idea which, who knows, could be the dumbest idea ever or somewhat innovative. Process improvement is a never-ending marathon.

That's it. A short and easy survey based on recommendability. The data are actionable for operations, marketing and human resources, which could tie results to team reviews or if done right, to a key metric any employee can appreciate: compensation.

Rhonda Abrams believes that small businesses should keep trying to grow even though the economy is slowing. She says this is exactly what has happened in past recessions:

In previous recessions, one of the things I'd observe is that many small businesses actually can grow by taking advantage of opportunities, such as weakened competition and big company cutbacks.

Small business owners' attitudes seem to back this up. A new survey from Intuit, which she cites in her column, finds that growth is on the mind of most entrepreneurs. From the Intuit survey:

In a considerable showing of solidarity, nine out of 10 U.S. small business owners reported seeing opportunities for their businesses in the current recession, and more than 75 percent expect growth. To make this growth a reality, small business owners say they'll rely on their experience and passion; nearly two-thirds have survived previous downturns. And to recession-proof their businesses, respondents plan to put their customers first, with 63 percent naming customer retention as their top priority, followed by focusing on their finances.

Abrams offers several ideas to help small businesses grow during the current downturn. You can see them here.

I add to her suggestions my recipe for success in the face of bad economic times -- strengthen your cash flow.

- Reduce debt

- Bootstrap more than ever with a focus on becoming more efficient and productive -- squeeze more out of your current staff, equipment and space before investing in adding more resources

- Focus all of your marketing on growing high margin transactions and the most profitable parts of your business -- your focus should be on growing the bottom line, not on growing sales.

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A few days ago I marveled how Salesforce.com rapidly responded to my tweet on Twitter about one of the company's products.

I asked Kingsley Joseph of Salesforce how he saw my tweet so quickly. He sent me a link to his Yahoo Pipes setup that tracks Salesforce's online word of mouth.

Yahoo Pipes allows you to build a single feed that is made up of other
feeds and dat). Kingsley's pipe tracks online mentions of Salesforce and other
company products across social media sites like Flickr, Technorati,
Bloglines, Digg, Techmeme, YouTube, Friendfeed and Tweetscan (for
Twitter.)

Kingsley is kind; he coded a generic pipe for CotC readers to track mentions about your company. Here's the pipe.

According to Kingsley, here's how to use the pipe:

In the search field, fill out the terms you want to track. For example, Salesforce Ideas could use: "salesforce+ideas", ideaexchange, ideastorm, dellideastorm, mystarbucksidea.
Usually the second field (URL fragment to ignore) should be .yourdomain.com . This is to prevent posts made in the your own blog/community from showing up. The dot before the domain is important.

The first time you run the search, Yahoo might return an empty list. To force it to go fetch feeds, click "More Options" and then click "Get as RSS". You can then hit back and re-run the pipe successfully.

Titles are de-duplicated and sorting is reverse chronological. Multiple search terms can be used and the matched term will be prefixed to the title of the post.
This doesn't do mass media, because there are good tools for that (Google Alerts come to mind).
Send any feature requests Kingley's way, but don't hold your breath. He's a busy guy : )