The Customer Advocate and the Customer Saboteur, a new book from Market Probe EVP, Dr. Michael Lowenstein
Customer decision making has become affected by an array of powerful factors, such as social word-of-mouth and brand passion. In his new book from ASQ Press, The Customer Advocate and The Customer Saboteur, Michael Lowenstein provides actionable insights into how to leverage customer perceptions and loyalty behavior in today’s ‘trust’ environment.The book, available July 1st, offers a comprehensive overview and set of tools for analyzing what works best in this new world of customer-led communication and behavioral influence.
Measuring customer satisfaction, loyalty and recommendation has long been the standard to weigh performance in the customer behavior space. However, these measurements must, at minimum, be augmented in today’s consumer climate. Push marketing has largely been replaced by informal peer-to-peer communication, which is now considered the most reliable, credible, and relevant source of ideas and information for b2b and b2c consumers.
With such a seismic shift in influence drivers, businesses can indeed leverage behavior so that, prospectively, customers will become strong advocates, thereby gaining an impassioned, unpaid sales force for their products and services. But, it won’t be done the old-fashioned way.
The following excerpt from The Customer Advocate and the Customer Saboteur offers a capsule explanation of customer advocacy and advocate behavior:
Advocates are the deeply connected and brand-involved, energized, positive and vocal de facto sales force within a company’s, product’s, or service’s customer base.
Customer advocacy can, in part, be defined as the degree of kinship with, favorability toward, and trust of brands. But, principally, advocacy identifies the monetizing downstream customer behavioral impact of informal communication by individuals on a voluntary, active, peer-to-peer basis (and as it influences their own downstream behavior, i.e., the self-perception effect, as a result of personal experiences).
Consulting firms such as McKinsey have determined that word-of-mouth drives 20% to 50% of customer decision making, so it is extremely important; and it is every bit as leveraging as recommendation. For the record, recommendation isn’t word-of-mouth, nor is it advocacy behavior. Willingness to refer or recommend can be considered one outcome of loyalty or advocacy behavior, rather than the behavior itself.
When considered as a core measure, or metric, of customer loyalty and business health, advocacy can be expressed as a combination of two key constructs: rational (tangible and functional) and emotional (service and brand impression) toward a brand, expressed through preference and narrowed consideration, or evoked, set, high share of spend, and positive, frequent communication behavior on behalf of the preferred company, brand or product, principally through offline and online word-of-mouth.
Customer advocacy can, in part, be defined as the degree of kinship with, favorability toward, and trust of brands. But, principally, advocacy identifies the monetizing downstream customer behavioral impact of informal communication by individuals on a voluntary, active, peer-to-peer basis (and as it influences their own downstream behavior, i.e., the self-perception effect, as a result of personal experiences).
Consulting firms such as McKinsey have determined that word-of-mouth drives 20% to 50% of customer decision making, so it is extremely important; and it is every bit as leveraging as recommendation. For the record, recommendation isn’t word-of-mouth, nor is it advocacy behavior. Willingness to refer or recommend can be considered one outcome of loyalty or advocacy behavior, rather than the behavior itself.
When considered as a core measure, or metric, of customer loyalty and business health, advocacy can be expressed as a combination of two key constructs: rational (tangible and functional) and emotional (service and brand impression) toward a brand, expressed through preference and narrowed consideration, or evoked, set, high share of spend, and positive, frequent communication behavior on behalf of the preferred company, brand or product, principally through offline and online word-of-mouth.
Dr. Michael Lowenstein is Executive Vice President at Market Probe CLICK FOR MICHAEL'S BIO