Creating Customer Vigilantes

Just as companies can create customer evangelists, they can also create customer vigilantes. Customer vigilantes are those customers who after a poor experience and a poor interaction will disparage brands/products to any and everyone they knew. While companies are not designed to intentionally create customer vigilantes, many times their actions seem as though they are.

How does a company go about "Creating Customer Vigilantes?" Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba eschew their evangelist perspective and instead, offer ways companies can cultivate customer vigilantes.

Ben and Jackie have a four-step plan to ...

Creating Customer Vigilantes: How to foster a powerful force of vigilantes who will not stop until they rejoice at your Chapter 11 filing

Sue your customers

- it makes for widespread bad publicity and grassroots backlashes

Some recent examples include ... the recording industry for suing 12-year olds and grandmothers who download songs. Warner Bros., for suing webmasters of Harry Potter fan sites. And Microsoft, for suing Canadian high-school student Mike Rowe and his URL www.mikerowesoft.com

Be arrogant as hell

- because it's all about you!

Every week, the news is filled with stories about companies that denigrate those stupid customers. Every time a new computer virus comes out, an arrogant engineer tells a reporter, "I think it's highly irresponsible of these users to click on email attachments. They should know better by now." Be proud of how you shoot from the hip and don't care what customers think! After all, it's all about you, baby!

Ignore your customers

- Feedback? What feedback?

The most evangelistic customers often provide the most feedback, which is sometimes negative. To join the customer vigilante causeway, companies should respond to negative customer feedback in a variety of ways. The least effective way is to send customers a canned response to their passionate criticism. One step up is to ignore the negative feedback altogether, even after receiving repeated negative feedback. Arguing with the customer and telling them how their opinion is wrong is the most effective, especially if the customer launches a petition drive against you!

Be difficult.

- and don't you dare communicate to customers

You can create customer vigilantes more effectively if you make it difficult for them to contact you. After all, how can a company react to customers if they can’t hear them? Erecting communication barricades is easier than you may think. Hide all phone numbers, email addresses, executives' names from all website and marketing materials. Better yet, buy the most expensive voicemail system imaginable and make it impossible for your customers to reach a human being.