Here's why: 61% of respondents to a recent survey said they check review sites, blogs and other customer feedback forums before buying a new product or service.

Furthermore, 80% of those people said online word of mouth influenced their purchase.

Put into perspective, the 1% Rule holds that only about 1% of the total number of visitors to a community where content be created, like Wikipedia, Yelp or CitySearch, will actually do so.

This means 1% of your customers could be influencing 61% of your prospects.

For any business that serves at least 100 customers per week, especially content-savvy Millennials, monitoring online word of mouth has graduated from a future to-do, to a must-have.

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 : )

A new study from Satmetrix provides some new numbers on how customer evangelists can help grow your business. And how customer vigilantes can hurt it.

The study examined customers in the computer hardware industry and found, using the Net Promoter
methodology, that "promoters" would spend about $1,818 of their own money and refer an
additional $816 of revenue from friends and associates.

That means a customer evangelist helped inspire sales that was nearly equal to 50% of what she'd purchased.

Some quick math shows the potential of customer evangelists more dramatically: Let's say a business has 1,000 evangelists whose average purchase during a period of time is $1,818. That means the group will have spent $1.8 million of their own money and referred $816,000 of business for a total of $2.6 million. Very quickly the cost of goods sold begins to decline while gross margins go up.

Satmetrix found that detractors (or customer vigilantes, as we like to call 'em here) spend a little less, but their bad buzz caused lost sales amounting to $1352 per detractor, nearly negating any of their actual value as a customer.

The bottom line with evidence like this: diligent listening is key. It's imperative to know whether customers are referring you or bad-mouthing you.

The talkative ones are the leading indicators of your future.