Have you recently recommended someone or something to someone else?
Has someone, especially someone you trust and whose opinion you usually rely on, recommended something or someone to you?
While preparing this article, I conducted a brief public opinion survey, asking colleagues in the office these exact questions. 100% of people responded that others' opinions are important, that they often use recommendations, and that there are situations in life (apartment renovations, car problems) when it's virtually impossible to live without recommendations and referrals.
We look for professionals, whether it's a doctor, nanny, or mechanic, through our friends.
Everyone also said they value the opinions of people they trust and who don't have personal motives when giving recommendations. Elements such as credibility, honesty,
and selflessness play an important role and, importantly, we verify them quickly and rather easily - even if only intuitively.

The importance of recommendations in professional life is evident even in the HR field.
Perhaps more frequently abroad, but these practices also exist in Poland where when a company is looking for someone, they start looking among employees' acquaintances. If a current employee recommends someone who proves to be a good fit and joins the team permanently, the person who made the recommendation receives financial compensation. This might seem exotic, but let's think for a moment, why not? If a company gains a good employee thanks to someone, why shouldn't they reward that with a bonus? After all, professional headhunters are compensated, and quite well.

People often talk about relationship selling, which is based on trust and credibility.
At the same time, it's probably precisely these - let's put it delicately: confused - concepts of recommendation
and favoritism, referral and nepotism, endorsement and cronyism that make us seemingly less inclined to recommend in official business situations.

Meanwhile, recommendations are very significant in business, even more than customer satisfaction.
If we take as a starting point that our customer should be satisfied with our services, because that's simply what they deserve, we don't merely aim to achieve this goal. It becomes the standard. We then strive for the customer's satisfaction to evolve into their willingness to recommend our services to others. Why is this important?

Marta Bryła-Gozdyra, Managing Director at Everbe, a team that professionally helps brands build positive experiences among their customers, speaks about the role of satisfaction and its connection to recommendation:
Customer satisfaction is not a sufficient premise to infer customer loyalty. Satisfied customers purchase products and services from different brands with equal satisfaction.
Only actual behaviors, meaning customers' purchasing decisions and willingness to recommend the brand to others, show that customer preferences lean toward that brand.
If customers are willing to recommend the brand to other important people in their lives, these customers are very important to the organization. Recommendation constitutes an important premise to infer their loyalty, and customer loyalty is something all companies strive for in their activities.

Recommendations have tremendous power. Also because when we recommend something to someone, we take on part of the responsibility. Perhaps this is why people are cautious about recommending others?
Marta Bryła-Gozdyra also draws attention to this:
If customers recommend a brand to people important to them, they do so extremely carefully - after all, the trust that others place in them is at stake.

So let's be careful, responsible, and when satisfied with services - recommend them to others.
Our opinion is very important to someone.
We, the customers, are very important.