@ Tom - I mixed my stats and I apologize. The Harris poll number comes from the customer experience realm: "60 Percent of Adults Who Communicate With Major Service Providers on Regular Basis Have Switched Due to Poor Customer Service" - You can find that here: http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idU...
It also points to the value of personalization (not the word that was vogue in 1999 - but really knowing who your customer is...) Get this: "Ninety-five
percent of those ... said a "personalized" customer experience is at least somewhat important; 65 percent said it is important, and 27
percent said very important.... Asked what they would do if they have a negative experience, 62 percent said they would be likely to cancel their service agreement. In fact the survey revealed 60 percent of these adults have already switched providers as a result of negative experiences." In the next day or two I am going to post a video interview I did with Lane Becker titled: Customer Service is the New Marketing. Look for the link here. It is a great discussion.
As to the value of referrals - here is a very helpful graphic that gets to the point:
http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2008/04/...
A summary statement:
"83% trust the word of a friend. But perhaps one of the more interesting points is that the number who trust consumer reviews by people they never met on a retailer's site is 60%, only slightly lower than "a review by a known expert."

That was a very rich presentation, Josh. Thanks.

Your graphic and description of the divergence-convergence process is a great and memorable way to set project mileposts. You need the divergent conversations, but you have to know when it's time to start focusing on results.

I'm looking forward to your next one.

Thanks. This was a very thoughtful and useful presentation. Can you provide the reference to the statistic you quoted early on, that 65% of people would rather interact with a stranger than with the company about the company's products?"

(You thought it was a Harris poll about six months ago (as of 9/30/2008)

On a related topic, someone in the chat room suggested looking for the Universal Mccanns' study, "When Did We Start Trusting Strangers", for similar figures. I found it here:
http://www.slideshare.net/mickstravellin/univer...
(Presented at UM Global August 2008)


The Harris poll would definitely be interesting to me.

Thanks!

Tom V
Lasselle-Ramsay Inc.