His lesson is that our everyday actions have a greater impact on our brand and reputations than the words we speak, or the marketing campaigns we broadcast. It's these everyday actions that cause customers to love us or to hate us, and to want to tell the entire world how they feel about us.

Although word-of-mouth has always been considered the most credible form of promotion, it's lacked the speed and reach of the traditional marketing mediums. As businesses with marketing resources, we've always had the advantage of reaching a larger audience more quickly. In other words, corporate marketing controlled the message that was heard throughout the marketplace.

But new Internet technology has virtually taken that advantage away from the corporation and given it to the customers. Social networks such as FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others enable the consumer to broadcast their own message about us to millions of potential customers, literally overnight.

Who remembers Vincent Ferrari? He was a customer of America Online who called AOL in June 2006 to cancel his unused account. Despite his repeated pleas, the AOL rep refused to cancel the account, and a frustrated Ferrari posted a recording of the call on the Internet. Within days, the tape was heard by millions of people. And within days, AOL's business tactics were publicly criticized, and its subscriber base plummeted.

The social networks of today's Internet have given the customer an enormous amount of control over the public's perception of a company -- control they've never had before.

The advice that Socrates offered would be very timely in today's MBA curricula. Socrates' wisdom tells us that as companies, we should make sure that the things we do that are seen and felt by our customers are aligned with the image that we wish to project. Sure, that's common sense. But like a lot of common sense, it's violated every day. And given the consumers' new power to broadcast our violations to the masses, we vendors have a much lower margin for error when it comes to pleasing our clients.

So technology is once again causing us to rethink some areas of business -- this time it's marketing and customer service. So what are some of the changes we should consider in response to the powerful new voice of the customer?

First, get your customer service house in order. Understand each of your customer touch points -- those points where a customer interacts with your company. No matter how insignificant a point of contact might appear, it contributes to the opinion that the customer forms about your company and can share with the marketplace.