I just observed the real world effect of how reputation management or the lack thereof can help or hinder your company. In Kelowna, there are several competing cab companies, but the two big ones are Checkmate Cabs and Kelowna Taxi.

Unfortunately, Kelowna Taxi has been unpredictable, unreliable, and often rude to me in the past. They’ve missed me on the street, got addresses mixed up, treated me rudely on the phone when the cab I was promised in 20 minutes failed to materialize within an hour, and so on.

In contrast, Checkmate has always been excellent, polite, and prompt.

So, at the current conference I have volunteered for, its the last day, and people are asking for a taxi cab number to get to the airport. So, I heartily endorse Checkmate, and thats the number that gets posted. I have effectively given Checkmate an almost monopoly on hundreds of conference attendees, all because of their excellent treatment of one person.

This is what companies miss: Every Customer Matters.