I was intrigued over the weekend by a tweet from timoreilly that “customer service is the new marketing”. The tweet linked to a recent video interview on O’Reilly Radar of Lane Becker, GetSatisfaction’s founder. In case you don’t already know, GetSatisfaction is a company that provides a web-2.0-kind-of-forum for customers to interact with each other and with representatives of companies about their experience with the brand. It provides an open space for folks who are mavens and devotees of a particular company to offer their expertise to resolve other folks’ problems, and a place for the disgruntled to vent and get solutions to  problems that arise.

I was really caught by the title of the piece, because the phrase is true on many levels. Great customer service is the basis for referral marketing. And in this day of public fora like Twitter, GetSatisfaction, and a proliferation of blogs, individual shoppers and potential clients are not only relying on their intimates and colleagues for referrals. They’re getting information about your company from strangers, and perhaps giving it more credence than what the business says about itself.

So, to this end, I was heartened to see in my Google Alerts this week that a client of ours, Cosmetic Dentists Donaldson & Guenther, got a great review from a client of theirs on InsiderPages:

The dental work was by far the best I have had done….It was also done very well, with a really unusual level of care and kindness.

We’re proud to work with clients who have happy customers, and even prouder when we see reviews like that. Lane Becker is absolutely right. Customers and clients have much greater influence over your brand in this world of user-generated content. It is the business’ responsibility to ensure that customers and clients have positive things to share, because share they will!