ABSTRACT : The article examines methods that companies can use to understand the experiences their customers have using their products or services. The authors argue that word-of-mouth advertising can have a negative or positive effect on a company. The article focuses on the concept of experience mapping to examine how a customer interacts with a company and its products. The authors believe that it is difficult to measure a customer's commitment to a company in the future. The authors distrust focus groups as a method of examining how well a company responds to customer needs. Above all, the authors argue, frontline employees need to be central to both measurements of customer interactions and to improving customer relations; job satisfaction and customer satisfaction are intrinsically tied together.