The worst case would have been for that customer to tell 10 friends and family members about the unhappy experience. Those people might have told 10 of their own friends and family members and so on until the momentum petered out. While you might have found the results disappointing, they most likely wouldn’t have had much — if any — impact on either your reputation or your bottom line.
Those days are long gone. As the world has grown increasingly connected because of the Internet, so has the ability for dissatisfied people to post negative comments and scathing reviews about your company. By themselves, negative comments probably won’t have an impact on either your company’s reputation or bottom line. The danger is that they can and sometimes do take on a life of their own.