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Activating Customer Engagement and Advocacy: the Community Effect

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Activating Customer Engagement and Advocacy: the Community Effect State of the Profession Series Case studies from the world’s top customer advocacy and engagement programs, showing how to grow the business in today’s buyer-empowered world. Activating Customer Engagement and Advocacy: The Community Effect By Wendy Lea, Executive Chairman, Get Satisfaction The rise of social has changed customer expectations of how they want to interact with companies and brands across the buyer's journey. To date, much emphasis has been placed on the customer relationship (social support) and customer acquisition (social marketing). But Wendy, one of the most highly respected thought leader on the future of customer relationships who coined the term, "Community Effect," will show how that can activate powerful customer advocacy. She'll provide practical examples from customer-centric companies, such as Intuit, Citrix Online, and Extreme Networks who are uncovering major opportunities to create communities of customers and prospects—regardless of their stage in the buy cycle—and actually "operationalize" advocacy. The key to success is to create engaging customer experiences that are hosted by the company and happen where the customer can get maximum benefit—on their own website, in the product, in a community platform, or even in the purchase flow itself—while exposing prospects to the questions, thoughts, ideas, and passions of existing customers in context. The impact is two-fold: not only can companies truly operationalize the power of their advocates, but they also will become more customer-centric in the process. 1 Activating Customer Engagement and Advocacy: The Community Effect I’m going to talk about how you can activate your customers to cultivate what I call The Community Effect. It goes beyond engaging customers to be your references to imbuing them with a feeling of being part of something bigger. At the heart of all this is the immutable fact that your customers now have all the power. Back in 2000, I read the Cluetrain Manifesto. And one of the things that stuck with me was this quote: "Companies that don’t realize their markets are now: • Networked person-to-person, • Getting smarter as a result, and • Deeply joined in conversation, are missing their best opportunity." I would highly encourage you to read this fourteen-year old book because it describes what is happening right now. And I believe that the author could help bring a high level perspective to the way you approach your job. To me, the gist of the Manifesto is that at the end-of-the-day, it is only the companies that aren’t afraid to engage with their customers that can reap the full rewards from that relationship. Now many of you have great brands behind you, from Cisco to Salesforce.com. Fine. But we have to remember that those brands are only as good as what their customers are saying about them online and to each other. I emphasis this because it’s critical to your success as a reference practitioner that you accept that reality. And that reality has ramifications for our trade. For example, one thing I know for sure is that the customer’s journey is very fundamental to what we’re all doing today. And the explosion of “digital everything” has disrupted that journey. Put Facebook and Twitter aside for moment. Those are tools. What I’m talking about is thinking about your customer’s digital footprint; their whole existence online. Customer engagement in the digital age Traditionally, we as brand holders by virtue of the fact that we sit in the middle, think that we control the customer journey, (see Figure 1 on the next page) 2 Why are all my friends Reference talking about Brand X? Customers Potential Customers I love this product Ads and here’s why! Word-of- & Mouth Branding What’s the difference Discover between Brand X and Brand Y Advocate Evaluate Loyalty Programs The Brand Promotions Here’s the best way to set up the product. Where can I buy it? Which version? Existing Bond Buy Customers Service Support Help Content I wish the product had more features. Experience Figure 1: The customer journey in the digital age. Of course we don’t. Customers and prospects come in the digital front door—that would be Google—without even knocking. So when we talk about the Discover phase at the top of the figure, we’re really talking about your customers’ search. Most people when they have a question, or a problem, they don’t usually start at your Website. This is why content and stories are so important. What this means, is that in reality, your digital “homepage” is Google. Your customer’s discovery phase is as a consumer doing research, not as a prospect engaging your brand. From there, prospects enter the valuation stage where they’re looking for others like them (same demographics, problems etc.) who are talking about you. And then they go on from there. What’s important here is that this process has changed dramatically over the last three to five years. And that’s why your job is so critical. And it’s why you’re in the catbird seat. Because, like never before, you have an incredible opportunity to interact with customers throughout their lifecycle and to harness their engagement. And that includes the chance to engage with them long before they’re ready to be your reference, which is toward the end of the process. So, as a highly regarded executive in your customer marketing organization, one way that you can bring thought leadership is to ensure that you are included in all the activities that are being woven through your website—one of the first places potential customers will visit while doing research. 3 Understanding your customers’ conversations and how to harness them If you look at the outside dialogue boxes in Figure 1 above, you’ll see typical questions that customers ask. “Why are all my friends talking about Brand X?” That’s where they’re Discovering. When they’re Evaluating, they ask “What’s the difference between Brand X and Brand Y?” And so on. So that’s what consumers are asking and talking about and they’re dodging in and out of various online sites. And they’re doing it on all manner of devices from mobile phones to iPads to PCs. They’re trying to feel their way to solving a problem by interacting with people in ways that are very organic and natural and transparent. This helps them to sort out different solution sets and vendors. Our primary job as marketers, therefore, is to understand how these conversations are happening along with how best to harness them at different stages of the sales process. So that you can move prospects throughout the cycle and cultivate their loyalty to your company and products. Social isn’t enough, your customers and prospects want your brand to join the conversation One of the things that I have been fascinated with is the role that social has played in this new engagement paradigm. One of the conclusions I’ve come to is that most of us should be thinking of this as an outside-in flow versus an inside-out flow. What I mean by that is that traditional CRM marketing reached out from within the enterprise. That mindset doesn’t take into account that consumers now come from the outside in to find out more.1 When customers and prospects do finally come to you, they want your Website to be interactive, full of the information they need and easy to use. And it needs to be integrated with social, and look seamless with it, as well. Social Media is merely a door into a Brand’s Customer Community 58% 58% of consumers have joined internet community based on a friend’s Facebook post Websites, not social networks, are the primary Remember that one of the main pathways to your Website will be through social place consumers go to make purchase decisions channels. So you don’t want visitors to be jerked from those networks over to your site only to discover an old, tattered, web asset81% that’s not digitally appealing. 81% of customers use company website 1 The statistics in the following three graphs come from primary research conducted by the Incyte Group for Get Satisfaction in 2012.to research products 4 Social Media is merely a door into a Brand’s Customer Community 58% 58% of consumers have joined internet community based on a friend’s Facebook post Websites, not social networks, are the primary place consumers go to make purchase decisions 81% 81% of customers use company website to research products That would be a jarring experience for them after cruising social networks all day long. Next, let’s explore online communities. I make a distinction between them and forums. Communities are very outcome-oriented, easy to navigate and provide content on demand in the right way. Forums by contrast are messy and very hard to find anything. Now, why would customers want to go to a community? In my opinion, they have three primary reasons for visiting such sites. First they want to get information quickly. Consequently, we need to make sure that the information we provide is digitally appealing. Videos are very helpful in this regard. Second, your customers want answers/information from consumers like themselves. They want to know that some of the community content is “unbiased”, meaning it’s created by real customers. So you need to promote the creation of such content and communities are an excellent tool to accomplish that.
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