Throughout the book you give tactical ideas on how companies can implement customer evangelist strategies. But how can a company spot a customer evangelist? What do they look like? How do they act?
Jackie and Ben point out the distinguishing features of an evangelist...
As they used to say on the "X-Files," sometimes they're hiding in plain sight. Here's what a customer evangelist does:
Spreads the word.
How well are you tracking who's talking about your company, and its products and services? Who is most passionately discussing you, both positively and negatively?
Recruits new customers.
Are you tracking referrals for products and services? For smaller companies, a "buzz map" drawn on series of big sheets of paper to map how you landed new customers can be illuminating. For large companies, it can be very valuable to track your volunteer sales force as it relates to specific product and service sales. To do so requires tracking referrals, either through a paper-based system (expensive and slow) or an online system (fast, highly efficient).
Actively offers suggestions, comments.
Customer evangelists tell you when things are great or terrible. They're not shy. When new products, services, stores or people appear, the customers who provide the earliest feedback (good or bad) are probably your evangelists. Companies are wise to know who they are and continually track their feedback. Embrace the early adopters.
Defends you.
If a company's mission truly is to change the world for the better, to be a good corporate citizen and not steal from shareholders and give back immeasurably to its community, it will tend to have the largest buffer of customer evangelists imaginable. During an appearance in Seattle last year, a former Nordstrom marketing executive told me how, when she was getting ready for a new store opening several years ago, a group of fur protestors joined the large group of customers waiting outside. This worried the executive tremendously. Her boss wisely counseled her to simply wait and see. Minutes later, they watched as a group of well-heeled women customers huddled together, then confronted the fur protesters with their fists stuck out in front of them: "Don't you do anything to embarrass this store! Nordstrom is a good corporate citizen of this community and has been for many years. If you do anything to ruin this day, you'll have to tangle with us!" With that, the fur protestors fled.
Supports you.
During her trial, Martha Stewart probably felt very alone, but she had customer evangelists (many of them celebrities) who sent her letters and emails of support. This didn't help win her trial, but it signaled to everyone that many people were sticking by her. In an example we provide in the book, we describe how Southwest Airlines received hundreds of letters of support after 9/11, and many of those letters contained checks, unused travel vouchers, drink coupons - customers were saying they wanted to support the company any way they could during that unimaginable time in our history.
It doesn't require a great time of need to have customer evangelists offer their support. Some customers may believe in you so much that they ask, "Is there anything I can do to spread the word about you?" If so, don't assume they want to get paid! Be prepared to offer them interesting options for infiltrating their networks about the value you offer.
From a psychographic profile, here's what a customer evangelist looks like (thanks to research from RoperASW):
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