For WOM Marketing, I agree with Sernovitz's point that the power is back with the customer or that consumers are now in control. While the advent of social media clearly makes the reach of every consumer much broader and quicker, this is not necessarily a new problem. Consumers have had the power to organize a campaign against companies that conduct their business poorly. Sometimes this would be to affect change to that company's product line or services and sometimes to take down the company. Rarely, if ever, were companies able to leverage a "good" customer experience into a promotional campaign. In the social media age, the customer does not need as much effort to organize, because any feedback can go viral and become a movement, often without any traditional sense of organization.

This is why it is important to have genuine, meaningful customer conversation. It seems that companies need to treat customers like the most valuable employees, and determine ways to retain those individuals and even use them for recruiting new valuable persons. The customer needs to feel valued and respected. Some of the most successful companies also give the customer an experience that gets them excited about the company or product and engages them in the evolution of the business. Some examples of this are the use of social media to vote on the next flavor of a soft drink or helping select a product model that a retail chain might carry for the next year. In both cases, the customer now has "buy-in" to the process, and if they value that, they will tell their "friends" about this preferred product and where to get it. There is also significant opportunity to get word of mouth from an excellent consumer experience in purchasing. The Sporting Goods company EVOGear, for example, has promoted the experience of the sports themselves - skiing, snowboarding, wakeboarding, etc. - as a primary vehicle for excitement about EVO, and that has translated into retail sales.

Becoming buzzworthy is clearly needed, as long as it is a good buzz. In the case of WOM Marketing, the old addage of "there's no such thing as bad press" no longer holds. If you are buzzworthy for completely failing on the basic customer-service promise, your customers and any potential customers, will know this and know it quickly. The response you give to customer complaints or problems will need to be just as quick and clear enough so that the buzz will get out that if there's a problem, it will get fixed. A company does not have control over what people will say or whether they will say something. What the company can control is the output. The company website or the product information provided should be accurate. For instance, Sernovitz's own website claims that the book is available in most Barnes and Noble bookstores. However, two different Barnes and Noble stores did not stock it nor was it at the warehouse. A problem with information accuracy, benign in this case, could become a disaster for Barnes and Noble or for a supplier that makes a claim that is no longer true. The risk in WOM marketing is that one small slip-up that you might think is innocuous can lead to a tide of bad feedback.