It is reported that 61% of small and mid-sized businesses found that more than half of their revenue comes from repeat customers rather than new business. You should not ignore the future revenue potential of an existing customer. There are some distinct advantages in strengthening relationships with current customers. A 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75%. The advantages of existing customers are: Important for up-selling and cross-selling opportunities; Less focused on price than new customers; Already confident and trusting in your ability to solve their problems; and often willing to become brand ambassadors. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems can help you to move prospects from lead to close by a simple dashboard adjustment. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/use-your-crm-application-to-build-repeat-customer-sales-78814

Unless one puts in the effort of being beside their customers they can never receive helpful word of mouth. In times of crisis if employees want to protect the company's reputation, they should instil a customer service culture, then empower staffs for making decisions, and perform properly in case of a problem. In times of crisis a briefing should be done to the frontline staffs about the crisis, which is a part of the crisis communication plan. This approach helps protecting one's reputation. Words of support from the directly affected people provides opportunity to enhance one's reputation further. There is no formula for gaining goodwill and loads of satisfied tweets and Facebook posts from customers. Frontline staffs as brand ambassadors and crisis communicators and hard work only pleases customers and satisfies them. Read more at:http://managementhelp.org/blogs/crisis-management/2010/12/13/crisis-management-customer-service/