Customer advocacy is the biggest threat to those customers who are loyal to your brand! The catch is the difference between a loyal customer and a customer who is an ambassador for your brand. Customers, who are loyal to your brand, but not an ambassador for your brand, are vulnerable to customers who do put their own reputation on the line by being an ambassador for a competing brand!
What is the emotional impact you have on your customers? What is the emotional contract your customers have with your brand? Do your employees make a human level connection with your customers? Is your brand meaningful to your customers? Are your customers risking their own reputation by being an ambassador for your brand to their friends and family offline and online?
If your answer to any of these questions is “I’m not sure”, you better start making sure. Because the loyalty of your customers may very well be based on the rational contract they have with your brand. And that puts you at risk of losing them. Because let’s face it, you too operate in a saturated marketplace, where consumers enjoy an abundance of choice, products and services are commoditized and interchangeable, and new entrants in the online domain steal your customers before you even realize it. So your product is as good as any. Or it should be, as your products are only your entry ticket into the marketplace. Preference is generated by the emotional connection a customer feels with your brand. Succeeding in making the emotional, human level connection with your customers is what turns them into ambassadors for your brand. Generates Customer Advocacy! Notice the use of the word ‘generates’. You can’t buy customers’ their advocacy. Their advocacy is genuine, authentic behavior. It requires genuine and authentic behavior from you. Say what you do, and do what you say! Walk the talk. Consistency between who you are and who you say you are.
It starts with how your employees feel. Are they ambassadors for you brand? Are you able to generate Employee Advocacy? What story do they tell about your, or rather ‘their’ brand in the offline and online world? Are they ‘slot-fillers’, fulfilling their shift? What about your customer-facing employees? Or are they so engaged that they are proud to work for your brand, proud at the job they do, both as an individual and as a team, and share their pride and engagement with the world? Do they feel part of something bigger? Are they driven by a ‘BIG’ idea, a shared strong sense of purpose? Bigger than just making profit. Business as unusual! Like Procter & Gamble’s former CEO A.G. Lafley inspired ‘his’ employees, saying: “There are 7 billion people on this planet. I want to build a personal relationship with each one of them, so we can serve them better.” What is the BIG idea that inspires your employees to deliver game-changing experiences to your customers? To make their interactions with customers meaningful to them AND the customers they serve. Making both them and the customers they serve feel good, not just about your brand, but especially about themselves, as human beings?
Corporate Social Responsibility is not just about the Planet, but starts with People. Sustainability is generated by the level of integrity you bring to the table in human relationships, both with your employees and your customers.
Do your employees have the self-trust AND your trust to do right by each and every customer they serve, not just on a rational level, but especially on an emotional level? Do they move beyond the technocratic tasks of their job and engage creativity, intuition and empathy when serving customers? Employees who are enabled, empowered and inspired to do just that, will be ambassadors for your brand, and generate advocacy from the customers they serve. Day after day, interaction after interaction. Because that’s the real catch. Advocacy is not tangible in that, once you have it, you have it. It’s like trust; it needs to be earned again and again. In that respect, advocacy is as vulnerable as loyalty. But the difference is, with a customer who is an ambassador you are not at risk of losing that customer like you are with a customer who is ‘just’ loyal. Because the ambassador has connected her own reputation to the reputation of your brand. So, she will tell you before turning against your brand. All you need to do is listen. Carefully!
©Nicolette Wuring – www.customeradvocacy.nl
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