Church of the Customer: Customer evangelism archives
June 10, 2009
The roots of word of mouth
Where does word of mouth come from?
A good experience, says Forrester.
A trustworthy relationship with peers, says Big Research.
A purple cow, says Seth Godin.
They're all right, but the bigger question is: What binds all of those source elements together?
The answer is almost always hidden within a company's culture.
Companies with great word of mouth tend to operate by a simple, yet inspiring purpose and well-defined values. They have created a cultural constitution, and every employee is sworn to abide by it, so help them God and the HR department. They understand that a purpose-driven company helps clarify decision-making while inspiring longer-term unity. They know that abiding by community-driven values compels employees to think of customers first, company second. They see the benefits of inspired, evangelistic customers and how company culture is the feeder river for streams of word of mouth.
When companies shun purpose and adherence to values, that's usually the source of trouble. Just look at credit card providers, health insurance plans, Internet service providers and TV service providers, whose four industries recently appeared in a Forrester report as generating more bad word of mouth than good. The primary interests of companies in those industries often are, in order of importance: company executives, institutional shareholders, Wall Street bankers and analysts, then customers. They stealthily raise fees, add hidden clauses to purposefully complex operating agreements and cut customer service before rolling back excessive executive compensation. It's not surprising then, that the government is now proposing standards to rein in excessive executive pay at publicly held companies.
Indeed, building word of mouth is bigger than simply paying employees well, much less leaving its function solely to the marketing or engineering departments. For creating good customer experiences, a company hires smart and empathetic people who believe in the company's culture and provide evidence of believing in its values. It does not hire talented jerks, regardless of education or work history. It expunges those who acted their way through the hiring process.
For building trustworthy customer relationships, a company makes decisions according to its values. They do not rely on bad profits, the kind which trick customers (often used by the industries in the Forrester report). A company with great word of mouth is consistently fair and honest with customers, employees, suppliers, vendors and competitors. They do the right thing and right their wrongs quickly, often going above and beyond what's necessary.
For creating purple cows, a company fosters creative thinking within tightly defined sandboxes to maintain elegant simplicity, a process that can be difficult but is ultimately rewarding to customers (and employees, especially), who crave simplicity in an age where complexity is daunting, worrisome and exhausting. Simplicity itself, especially with traditionally complicated products or systems, can be a bountiful source of word of mouth. Elegant simplicity is a form of art, and fans will gather to pay it homage.
April 06, 2009
On being a chief evangelist
Betsy Weber has been chief evangelist of software company TechSmith for six years. Her role is to listen to customers, determine their needs, sift that data and put it into context for TechSmith's software developers.
At the same time, she's also building a passionate fan base for TechSmith by meeting customers and being the warm, caring person she is naturally.
We asked her to put her six years of work into numbers:
- Met 7,000 customers in person
- Attended nearly 200 conferences (30 per year)
- Picked up 3,000 followers on Twitter
- Maintains regular, personalized contact with about 1,000 people
Has it paid off? TechSmith has done well in that time: double-digit revenue growth every year, totaling 259%. It's one thing for your company to say, in blog posts and email newsletters, that it loves customers. It's another thing to go out and do the hard work of brand grassroots-building and demonstrate it face-to-face.
(If you're interested, Betsy will explain how to be a company chief evangelist officer in a SWOM webinar this Wednesday.)
March 15, 2009
Values worth repeating
Zappos spends more time focusing on its culture than most companies. That approach isn't for everyone but then again, very few companies are like the customer evangelist-powered Zappos, which does over $1 billion annually since launching in 1999.
Values are platitudes unless they're backed up with action. Zappos' values are worth spreading. (The links go to the company's explanation of each one.)
- Deliver WOW Through Service
- Embrace and Drive Change
- Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
- Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
- Pursue Growth and Learning
- Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
- Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
- Do More With Less
- Be Passionate and Determined
- Be Humble
February 23, 2009
Creating employee evangelists
Does customer evangelism begin with employee evangelists?
Good question. We think so, but we're glad grad student Pamela Hutton is trying to quantify the answer with dissertation research at Fresno Pacific University. If you're a company employee and have opinions about the role of company culture and its effects on employee evangelism/ambassadorship, take Pamela's confidential survey. Deadline is Wednesday Feb. 25. She promises to share the results with us in late May.
January 28, 2009
Why I'm a fan
I'm a hard-core Pittsburgh Steelers fan, one of the many who ring this planet, even in space. I have felt this way as long as I can remember, starting from age 10 when I made my own Terrible Towel by ironing on letters to mom's yellow dish towel.
For the past 22 years, wherever I've lived, I have watched every Steelers game with other fans, primarily at fan bars. My Sundays revolve around football. I own a custom Steelers jersey, life-size Ben Rothlisberger and Hines Ward wall art, six Terrible Towels, Steelers stadium blanket... Crazily, there's more, but you get the idea.
But why am I fan? What are the psycho-social reasons why I affiliate myself with a profit-producing entertainment enterprise? I divide my fandom into four categories:
Values
It can be hard to explain why I love the Steelers -- a brand, obviously -- as much as I do, but the most obvious reason is how the team's values coincide with mine: hard work, being humble, playing as a team. The team has been family-owned and managed for generations, another attractive quality. The Rooney family provides consistent evidence that its operating philosophy is driven by its values, not conveniently ignoring them to win at any cost. For as long as I remember, the team has always recruited and hired players who share a similar value system. It cuts those who violate those values. I take it as a point of pride the team's value system doesn't include scantily-clad cheerleaders on the sidelines. Just a distraction anyway. Even though the team has lost plenty of games, committed its share of blundering calls, it never compromised values. Its values are the brand.That's worth believing in. Consistency + time = loyalty.
Rituals and icons
Great athletes rely on rituals to help maintain consistent performance. Repetition creates muscle memory. The same is true with a brand. Repeating rituals, especially with iconic tools, builds familiarity into psychic memory. I wear the same Steelers jersey and scarf every week. I sit in the same bar seat week to week. My friend Amy always neatly folds her towel the same way, after every wave. Part ritual, part superstition. The Terrible Towel is iconic of our fandom. I grew up near Pittsburgh but never attended a game as a kid so I had to have my own Terrible Towel to watch every game, Steelers hat fixed atop my head. I waved my towel in front of the TV with the 59,000 people who were waving theirs at every game. I have six official Towels now, including the 2005 Super Bowl Terrible Towel and one dating back to the 70's. I never watch a game without one. Radio commentator Myron Cope is our patron saint, having come up with the idea.
Shared emotional experience
Every city I've lived in since leaving Pennsylvania has had a Steelers fan bar, including Raleigh, Dallas, Chicago and now Austin. There's something about screaming HERE WE GO STEELERS, HERE WE GO along with other fans at a loud, raucous bar. High-fives after a great play. Seeing the same fans week after week. Becoming friends with them. Sharing in the emotional experience of a great win or devastating loss. It's one reason why Oprah is a powerful force in American culture: her audience regularly participates in emotional experiences. Football and Oprah -- about as polar opposites as they come to men and women -- are more similar than you'd think.
Decoration
I have always loved the Steelers but this year, in honor of their seventh Super Bowl appearance, I elevated my devotion. I got a Steeler logo as a tattoo. I've never been a tattoo-kinda-gal but it was the next logical, emotional step, if that makes sense. I would never tattoo any other symbol on my body, but I'm driven -- compelled -- to do it because of my identification with the brand's values, rituals, icons and shared emotional experience. The Steelers are a reflection of me, and I am a reflection of the Steelers.
UPDATE: Congrats to the Steelers on their 6th Super Bowl win. Read a terrific article from Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel about how the Steelers have been successful through the years.
November 17, 2008
Mark Cuban and hating to lose
The SEC has filed suit against Mark Cuban, alleging he engaged in insider trading in 2004 with mamma.com to avoid a $750,000 loss. At the time, Cuban was the largest shareholder in the company.
On his blog, Cuban denied the allegations, saying "the Commission’s claims are infected by the misconduct of the staff of its Enforcement Division."
Given how little we've heard from the SEC the past few years, save for how its overwhelming lack of enforcement during the financial industry meltdown, this is a curious case. Then again, Cuban "hates to lose," as he says in a separate blog post about the NBA team that he owns. That post immediately precedes his terse post about the SEC suit.
Cuban hates to lose and, as we learned profiling him and the Dallas Mavericks for a case study in "Creating Customer Evangelists," he sometimes struggles with the competing interests of long-term winning thinking and short-sightedness that can erase winning margins.
His long-term winning thinking is showcased in how he converted one of the worst franchises in professional sports to become one of the most valuable. He did so by making the opponents of his team feel just as welcome at the Mavs' arena with a visitors locker room that's as comfortable and well-appointed as his own team's; after all, opposing players may one day join your team. He made it OK for homemade signs to be brought into the arena (a stern no-no of the previous owners), and encouraged crazy fan loyalty by constantly demonstrating his own. He invested heavily in technology for the coaches and players and a statistician, two largely unexplored areas prior to Cuban's investments. He told us back in 2002 how much he admired the Chicago Cubs and the passionate loyalty of its fan, a loyalty cultivated by its honest, "loveable loser" spirit.
On the other hand, during our conversations with him, Cuban talked extensively of his time of being a daytrader prior to buying the Mavs and how he loved shortsellers "because they keep companies honest." Shortsellers, it turns out, have been partially blamed for the demise of a number of financial institutions this year. Cuban also defined ultimate success in business by being summoned to Congress amid accusations of holding a monopoly on an industry. Microsoft, of course, has spent billions paying fines and perhaps billions more in legal fees extracting itself from monopolist charges. It has taken many years to rebuild the goodwill from the damage caused by its previous win-at-all-costs mentality.
No doubt, Cuban will probably surprise a number of people with the way he defends himself against the SEC's charges. Ever since he was kid selling garbage bags door to door, he's been unafraid to win. The question about the mamma.com case, though, did he go too far to avoid losing?
Nothing against the watchdogs at the SEC, but I hope they're wrong.
Update: Cuban has posted a memo from his attorney, who excerpted his "interview" (unclear if it's a deposition) with the former mamma.com CEO. As we might have expected, this will probably evolve into a good example of a high-profile lawsuit first tried in the court of blog-driven public opinion. The stakes are high.
September 16, 2008
Why customer rituals work
You may know I'm something of a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.
Every city I've called home, and many I've only visited, has had a bar where Steelers fans gather to watch our beloved team crush its unworthy competitors. (OK, I get a bit rambunctious when it comes to football.) Here in my relatively new home of Austin, I was happy to find a bar nominating itself as the local headquarters for Steelers fans.
The reality is, it's an OK place. There's one, lineman-sized difference between the Austin bar and the bar in Chicago where I previously worshiped every Sunday: A lack of rituals.
Rituals are the code of ceremonies observed by an organization. They are the shared experiences of a group. They create emotional glue. To an outsider, a ritual can be weird, wacky or just plain stupid. To people inside the organization, they may be metaphors for life, death, or renewal. For never-say-die Steelers fans, rituals can symbolize all of the above.
The lack of rituals at the Austin bar makes it simply a place to watch the game. It has low energy. It doesn't do anything to back up the claim of being headquarters -- or a "Stillers" church for the rest of us.
But at the Chicago Steelers bar (and others I've visited), the rituals were abundant:
- A live polka band playing the Steelers' fight song after scores
- Wiping one's feet on an opponent's jersey at the front entrance
- A gregarious fan leading the crowd in the "Here We Go Steelers" chant before crucial 3rd downs
- A ready supply of Terrible Towels to wave when the team makes a great play
- The wearing of Steelers jerseys, t-shirts, hats, earrings, etc.
- Serving Iron City beer (a Pittsburghian brew)
- Reserved tables for regulars
- Tailgating in the bar parking lot before games, just like at home
All rituals. All done regularly, no matter what, for it's repetition of rituals combined with emotional subtext that creates meaning. People will tell their friends and family about the rituals they experience when the context is right. That just leaves it up to an organization being open and brave enough to establish and follow rituals that's difficult, as my Austin bar proves every week.
For your business, have you devised rituals for your customer evangelists? What shared experiences allow them to build a worshipping foundation?
July 28, 2008
Customer evangelism case study: TOMS Shoes
Here's a customer evangelism case study in the making: TOMS Shoes.
TOMS was founded in 2006 by Blake Mycoskie, a former contestant of "The Amazing Race" who was inspired by the low-cost alpargatas (espadrille-type shoes) during a trip to Argentina.
His idea was to bring alpargatas to the U.S. and give them a fashion makeover.
Blake was also struck by scenes of poverty in Argentina; so he launched TOMS based on the premise of giving away a pair of shoes to shoeless children in third-world countries for each pair he sold.
So far, he's sold 200,000 shoes and given away the same number. He's struck licensing deals with Ralph Lauren and distribution deals with all sorts of department stores and retailers like Whole Foods (where I first saw TOMS last month). Blake has also created an evangelistic following; one restaurant chain in New York outfits all of its servers with TOMS because of the cause.
TOMS Shoes has buzz for a variety of reasons, which include:
- An uncommon product amidst of sea of commonality.
- A simple, yet inspiring story that's easy to tell and therefore spread.
- An accessible and well-spoken leader who'll tell the story to anyone who'll listen.
- A strong culture of participation among employees and customers that's ingrained into the DNA of the company.
JJ Ramberg of MSNBC has an excellent piece on the magic behind TOMS.
June 25, 2008
Evangelism and communities webinar
During a webinar that launches tomorrow, Rob Howard and I will chat about the building blocks of communities. It's geared primarily to those thinking about establishing online communities for their companies or brands.
Rob is the founder and CEO of Telligent, a company that makes community software. He's a smart guy. You'll like him.
Plus, he's giving away 100 copies of "Citizen Marketers" to webinar registrants (the books have since been snapped up). Even better, the webinar is free.
Update: Here's the archived webinar.
June 05, 2008
Brad and Willy's evangelism adventure
A coffee/smoothie shop called Lift opened in my neighborhood recently, and I was immediately impressed. Every person behind the counter has introduced his/herself and often asks for feedback on the stuff I've purchased.
I eventually met Brad (right) and Willy (left), the owners of Lift. It's their first retail business. What they lack in experience they make up for in their zeal to please customers. They made it a point to read "Creating Customer Evangelists" and a week later presented me (unsolicited) with their plan, based on the six tenets of customer evangelism. I was so impressed that I had to share it.
Customer Plus Delta - gather feedback
- Have counter staff track "How did you hear about us?"
- Encourage on-line blogs, reviews (yelp.com)
- Display corporate email address and encourage customers to send ideas and suggestions
- Design a sandwich or a smoothie and we'll name it after you
- Computer terminal near entry to encourage feedback, join email mailing list, etc.
Napsterize knowledge - share knowledge that will spread
- Educate customers – display FAQs, online info
- Display daily-changing coffee facts near register
- In-store computer terminal
Build the buzz
- Cool t-shirts with rotating logos
- Network hubs utilizing store owners (bikes, shoes, kayaks), trainers and coaches – these people are influential in their business and among the participating consumers
- Heavy Lifters Club – cool card with benefits for frequent use, try all 10 smoothies get 1 free, birthday gifts, etc.
- Natural fruits, juices, locally roasted coffee, compostable cups made from corn syrup – these ideas all work well within the Austin fabric
- Book cool bands to play Sat afternoons
- Host charity events on site – Helping Hand Home, People's Community Clinic, Leukemia Foundation
- Distribute coupons in goodie bags of races in the area
- Get featured in Austin TidBits email newsletter – twice weekly, email advertising openings, events, specials, etc.
Create community
- Email newsletter, blog, My Space/Facebook and other social media
Bite-size chunks
- Distribute free samples at on-site charity events
- Distribute free samples in front of store on weekends
- Hand out "credit cards" to kids in elementary and middle schools in area during honor rolls and graduation events for free smoothie
Create a cause
- Eat healthy, all natural, no preservatives, environmentally friendly/green – Austin values
- Charity in the community -- partner with the Get Fit program at UT to take fitness classes to area schools, incorporating the idea of eating healthy (smoothies) within the curriculum
Brad, Willy and general manager John (pictured here) have already implemented a number of these ideas since sending me their plan.
Got any other feedback for Brad and Willy?
