Customer Satisfaction is passé! Think Customer Advocacy!

Forget customer satisfaction. It is a thing of past; it reflects what has happened – you cannot build forward looking strategies on data from past events. In the world of social media, supported by smartphones and location tagging, you need to take customer satisfaction to the next level. Your customers need to be passionate about using your products and services and feel proud to talk about it. They are not your customers – they are advocates of your brand! And they love themselves and feel proud for doing just that!


Advocacy is very different from customer satisfaction or loyalty. A satisfied customer is happy to have used your products/services –he may return (and become loyal) or may not. Advocates are a breed apart. Advocates are ‘smitten’ by your brand – they see a reflection of their personality and values in your brand and seek to promote it. Advocacy is a relationship based on trust. Companies lose control of their brand message to the advocates who reach to the masses in an anonymous, everlasting way.

Advocates are the dreams for any company. But how do you go building advocates?

Start with the trolls: Surprised, are you? Trolls have the potential to generate a lot of negative vibes, doubts and apprehensions about your brand. They may not be factually correct – nevertheless, they sow a seed of doubt! Develop an environment where customers would not talk bad about your products/services. Identify and prioritise customers with high negativity and engage with them to fix the root issues. In many cases, the root cause of negativity is a trivial issue – which unattended, has snowballed. A small delay in response, a minor discrepancy in their invoice or a sour experience at your front office! All which could have been fixed with a simple solution, but were neglected and has become a sore point for the troll. It is still not late. Go ahead and fix it.

Very recently I stayed at an upmarket hotel at Bristol, UK. I was unfortunate to be trapped in a lift during a power outage! Being trapped in a lift where the emergency lights are not working and no one is responding to the alarm for over 25 minutes is a horrifying experience. I can’t blame the hotel for power outage! But I definitely blame the hotel for extremely poor handling of the situation after the event! The hotel staff seemed least bothered with the fact that a customer has been trapped in the lift for 25 minutes! Later when I complained to the hotel management (and even their CEO), I got the impression that (a) they doubt the trauma I experienced; and (b) it was not their fault as I was trapped due to power outage!

The experience of 25 minutes has converted me to a troll! Had they handled the post event in a positive way, I could (and definitely would) have commented on their excellent treatment of the situation!

Create the milieu for a positive customer service experience: Study the complaints from your customers – they have sufficient data on what does NOT work well in your business. What is the root cause of the problem in that department? My bet is (a) communications – internal, inter-functional communications; and/or (b) empowerment – the workers are not authorised to take initiative, or are not encouraged to do so! Develop effective internal communications where a worker does not think twice before taking a decision to deliver a positive customer experience. Reward and publicise such instances!

Take that extra step: when your customers least expect it and in return you will experience their long term commitment. A couple of years ago, I was travelling to Bangalore in India. My flight (Emirates) landed at Chennai from where I took a connecting flight to Bangalore. The domestic flight was through a local carrier – Kingfisher. When I landed at Bangalore I realised that I had a missing luggage (I was travelling with my family and hence 7 pieces of luggage). It was obviously not Kingfisher’s mistake as I had failed to collect my luggage at Chennai and hence did not check it in with Kingfisher. The Kingfisher ground staff went to his office and called the Emirates office at Chennai. When he was not able to locate my luggage, he took down my details and was finally able to track my luggage at Chennai airport. He arranged for the pickup and delivered it to my hotel in Bangalore. Of course, it cost a significant effort on the part of Kingfisher airlines! But it created a strong advocate of me for life – despite the fact that I have had quite a few instances of frustration since then.

Every customer experience adds to the trust. However, one ‘extra step’ experience can help build a life-time of trust and brand advocacy! In my earlier experience, had the hotel handled the post event positively, it might have been that ‘extra step’ required to turn me into an advocate! Their loss!

Companies now have the technologies to build deeper relationships with their customers – the social networks. Don’t underutilise the power of social networks by ‘promoting’ your brand. Rather encourage your fans/followers to share their experiences on the social networks. Encourage them to be creative and reward their creativity. You’ll be surprised by the response. Today, armed with a £50 digital camera and a computer or just their smartphone, customers can create extremely powerful messages for your brand, publicise and perpetuate them through the ‘likes’, reposts and retweets!

Customer Services have become the most important function in your organisation – even important than your sales and marketing. In this digital age consumers are seeking information as never before. It is the information that helps them make a buying decision. My buying decisions are being made by the group/community that I belong to and their recommendations. If I need to book a table at a restaurant, the first information I seek is customer’s reviews! I trust a Peter or a Jane who happens to be a friend of a friend of a friend more than I trust the restaurant’s ads!

Advocates play a key role in nudging people into buying decisions. Advocates are seemingly unbiased and people trust their recommendations/experience. The process of creating advocates requires a different level of customer service than you currently may have in your organisation. It requires a deeper segmentation of your customers into indifferent and satisfied. For the indifferent customers, emphasise the value that they receive over the price and create customised value drivers at the touch points.

For the satisfied customers, analyse their likes and dislikes (again trust social media to provide this information to you), align your values to those and build an emotional bond with them. Encourage them to share their experience – good or bad! Every bad experience gives you another opportunity to proactively engage with them and underline the importance that you ascribe to them! Create an ‘invitation only’ community for them where satisfied customers are able to comment on your ideas, future products/services and give suggestions. If possible, invite them to ‘exclusive’ events. And if you’re thinking about the returns on your investment, just consider the point when they turn advocates!

Matthew Rhoden summed this process very well by saying, “Satisfaction and loyalty are important, but they're old news. Forward-thinking companies will be the ones that identify and work with their customer advocates to genuinely build the brand, the customer base, and the bottom line.”

Customer Servicing @ Twitter

Twitter is just not to communicate with your friends; it can do a lot to your brand and your servicing.


What can 140 characters do for you? A LOT! Yes! A lot. Despite being designed as a two way communication channel for friends, Twitter has evolved to a serious business tool. And it just does not communicate your brand message. You can – and companies are doing it already – use it to enhance your customer support, turning customer complaints into customer compliments!

If you have not done so far, do a twitter search (search.twitter.com) for your brand. Chances are you’d come across people commenting on your products or services – some are good, and there may be some criticisms. So what do you do about it? You can (a) choose to avoid it; after all no one that you know uses twitter, or (b) deal with them head on. The first option can be risky. With 175 million (and growing) user base, the negative tweets have a fair chance of being commented upon, retweeted. And that does not hold your business in good stead. It is equally well known that the tweets do not stay on twitter. They are actively being included in web search results on Google and Bing, and are used to determine the (in)famous page rank on google. Think again, a web search on your product results in the first 5 results being negative tweets!

Little wonder why businesses are increasingly using Twitter and promoting it as a customer servicing tool. Creating a dedicated Twitter account for customer service (e.g., @CompanynameService or @CompanynameSupport) shows your customer you are treating Twitter as a legitimate way to talk to your business. It is just not there for brand building (often interpreted as one way communication), but to listen to customers and their issues. And you need not wait for customers to complain. Use Twitter search to find out if people have complained about your products and services before and start your conversation with them. Being proactive and searching out unhappy customers will earn a lot of accolades for your business. In addition you’d be seen as proactive and more likely to turn a (previously) dissatisfied customer into a ‘happy tweeter’.

Do not use Twitter to get involved into discussions with your customers. Use Twitter as a place to pick up an issue and move it quickly outside the forum to solve it. Of course, if you have solved the issue to the satisfaction of the customer, do ask him to tweet their feedback! If you are moving an issue away from Twitter, please remember that customer would expect the same promptness as on twitter. Just do a wild search on twitter to find out how many complaints are about the delay in response. If there’s a genuine reason for delay, reply to the customer’s tweets with the reason.

Twitter is a great way to build your brand while providing servicing to the irate customers. And it hardly costs anything. If your customers uses Twitter for raising their concern (or praising your business), you HAVE to be there to apprehend it and deal with it quickly and effectively. Nothing can be worse than unresponded tweets (and retweets, and re-retweets). If it has not been picked up by another irate customer, surely your competitors are not going to let it die down!

Markeets and mongooses: Going Viral!

He was born in January 2009 and seven months later he was an international sensation with a fan following to die for: 700,00 followers on Facebook, 22,000 followers on Twitter, a separate gallery dedicated to his family on Flickr, and some months later a hugely successful autobiography. The only problem is, he’s a CGI anthropomorphic Russian Meerkat. Meet the famous Aleksandr Orlov from comparethemarket.com (or comparethemeerkat.com).


As his popularity grows, so does the twist in his family’s tragedies which viewers never tire to watch over and over again and share the through YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter and a host of social media sites. Aleksandr is every PR agency’s dream! Every company’s dream mascot. (and I do hope, using a twist on the spelling would help my blog too!)

Why does a campaign turn viral, when others don’t? What was special in this campaign? It was an advertisement for (yet another) comparison site with a plain Jane name! Yet, the meerkat caught the imagination of its viewers catapulting the website to the top!

One of the coolest things about the Web is that when an idea takes off, it can propel a brand or a company to seemingly instant fame and fortune. For Free. Whatever you call it – viral, buzz, word-of-mouth... – having other people tell you the story drives action. One person sends to another, then that person sends it to yet another and so on. The challenge for marketers is to harness the amazing power of word-of-mouse.

Let’s look at some of the products/campaigns that have been successful. Is there something we can learn from them?

Classic Case 1: Hotmail.com

The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free Web-based e-mail services. The strategy is simple:

1. Give away free e-mail addresses and services,
2. Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com" and,
3. Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates,
4. Who see the message,
5. Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then
6. Propel the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.

Like tiny waves spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond, a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward extremely rapidly.

Classic Case 2: Gmail

Unlike Hotmail, Gmail came up with a different strategy. It invited a select group to Gmail. The initial invitees had a limited number of invites. As PC users were getting used to Google, they were intrigued by the ‘exclusivity’ surrounding Gmail. Very soon, people were ‘begging’ the Gmail users for introductions. Some enterprising chaps even tried to ‘sell’ gmail accounts introductions on the web!

So what was different in this case? Exclusivity, obviously!



Case 3: Multi-level marketing

Use existing communication networks – Multi-level marketers have perfected this art. Social scientists tell us that each person has a network of 8 – 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. Start with one and expect the communication/service/product to ride on this network. If you have a LinkedIn account you are aware of this geometric progression.

So what are the key elements of a successful viral marketing? Ralph Wilson, very aptly sums them up as follows:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilises existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others' resources

It is not necessary that all elements must be present for a campaign to turn viral. However, it is logical to assume that the more elements are present, the more powerful the results are likely to be.

The Internet provides a perfect nurturing ground for viral marketing. You devise a plot, weave a story (3 minutes maximum – keep YouTube in mind), put it on the web and start talking about it. It can begin from as simple as putting a link below your email signature, to posting a link on facebook and twitter. As you can see, the formula for success includes a combination of some great—and free— Web content (a video, blog entry, interactive tool, or e-book) that provides valuable information (or is groundbreaking or amazing or hilarious or involves a celebrity), plus a network of people to light the fire and links that make your content very easy to share.

While this looks fairly simple, I wish I could tell you whether your campaign will turn viral. Honestly, if I knew this secret, I’d not be here writing this blog! Having said that, the fact remains that viral marketing is one of the most exciting and powerful ways to reach your audiences. It is not easy to harness the power of word-of-mouse, but any company with thoughtful ideas to share – and clever ways to create interest in them – can, after some careful preparation, hit the jackpot. And, even if you do not this time, what do you have to lose?

Are you caring enough?

Came across this wonderful post on Tom's website...

Teddy Roosevelt said, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."


So, how do you know you are caring enough?  Do a self-assessment on your level of caring by thinking through these nine questions:

1. Are you REALLY listening when they are talking OR are you thinking about what you will say next?
2. Do you care for them OR do you care about their opinion of you?
3. Do you usually call them when you want something from them or when you think you can offer something of value to them?
4. Are they in your "network" or are you both in each other's "networks?"
5. Do you leave them impressed with you OR do you make them feel good about themselves?
6. What do you see when you see people?
7. If time is money, they are making an investment by spending their time (money) with you. How are you ensuring that they are getting the right return-on-investment for this interaction (ROII)?
8. Are you treating them the way you want them to treat you?
9. Are they REALLY better off because you are in their life?

If you want to read the full blog, click here.