In marketing, there is an old axiom that states that one unhappy customer usually tells as many as 8-10 potential customers (i.e. his or her friends and colleagues) about the poor service that was received. The Internet has completely changed that. Now, by virtue of the fact that comments on the Internet can be forever memorialized and searched by prospects and existing customers alike, one unhappy customer now has the potential to tells hundreds or even thousands of prospective customers about poor service. To make matters worse, many comments made on message boards or forums are anonymous, so you do not actually know if the person making the negative comments is, in fact, a disgruntled customer or simply someone with an agenda (that is contrary to the agenda of the company in question). So, how do you know that you can trust the feedback being provided about a business?

That's where services like Customer Lobby come into the picture. Because the Customer Lobby service verifies that anyone making a comment, either positive or negative, is a customer, you can be certain the feedback that you are reading is, in fact, from a bona fide customer rather than from an anonymous writer on a third party message board that has nothing to do with the company in question.

We signed up for this service for the very reasons stated above. We needed a third party mechanism for our customers to come in and provide objective feedback on our offerings. We expect to receive both positive and negative feedback as part of the process, just as any business would. However, when we do receive negative feedback, we'll know that it's actually from a real customer who has experienced our service who is in a position to provide input that we can hopefully act upon to improve our offerings.

The service itself is simple. Each month Customer Lobby contacts a few customers to get feedback on the company's products or services and writes up a summary of the feedback. In addition, you can send existing customers invitations to provide online feedback through Customer Lobby. You know that the people providing feedback are actually customers.

Right now, the Internet runs the risk of becoming a wasteland for misinformation about any variety of things, including businesses. I think that the Internet needs more services like this where trust can be established and intelligent people can sort the nonsense from the value. I highly recommend you consider it.