Tools and Tactics for Advocacy Strategies

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Once you become convinced that the paradigm of marketing is shifting from the push strategies of the mass production era to the advocacy-based strategies that will flourish in an era of growing customer power you’ll need new tools and business tactics. Smart companies are currently in the process of building their own advocacy tool kits. There is a clear first-mover advantage when it comes to advocacy because once customers establish a genuine and deep relationship of trust with a firm, they are not at all likely to switch to a competitor. Later entrants will always have an inferior position. This is one area where the early adopters have an opportunity to create a sustainable competitive advantage.

To enhance your firm’s ability to act as an advocate for your customers. try using some of these tools:

Tool #1–Build a good foundation first

Don’t even try to act as an advocate for customers unless you have the three basics in place:

1. A working TQM program that ensures you consistently deliver a high-quality product or service.

2. An effective customer satisfaction program that enables you to measure whether you’re creating happy customers.

3. A customer relationship marketing (CRM) capability where you can learn enough about each customer to effectively act as their advocate.

Too #2–Change the focus of your CRM program

Instead of using CRM to drive sales, focus on helping customers make the best decisions possible and then supporting them through their lifetime of ownership. To achieve this, you’ll need to provide every customer with complete, unbiased and incredibly transparent information. You’ve got to make it easy for customers to contact other customers so any exaggerated claims can be uncovered. You have to become a brand your customer trusts implicitly. In short, you’ve got to orient your CRM away from one-to-one marketing and more towards delivering precisely what customers need.

To be more specific, in order for customer advocacy to work for your firm, at a minimum your CRM program must provide:

The ability to individualize marketing.

Establishment of your brand as a trust mark.

Loyalty programs that reward continuing business.

Sales channel partnerships to maintain consistency.

The ability to carry our opt-in permission marketing.

Individualized one-to-one communication.

The provision of full information and advice.

Full transparency and totally unbiased information.

A good CRM program helps both your firm and your customers. You gain the ability to know what your customers are thinking about the products and services you offer. On the basis of that understanding, you’re then in a position to craft better products, fine-tune and optimize your marketing, build the relationship and generate premium profits. In return, customers get everything they need to make better decisions. They also establish and grow their relationship with your firm throughout the lifecycle of ownership that ideally stretches from purchase to use, service and ultimately re-purchase. This is a sound platform on which to build customer advocacy.

Tool #3–Continuous learning

Continuous improvement is a key component of TQM. Trust is enhanced and strengthened when you have a continuous learning system in place. Through market research and market experimentation, you can learn how to increase the trustworthiness of your marketing programs.

For example, Intel decided it wanted to increase the level of trust on one of its customer support sites for digital cameras. It tried four different experiments: 1) trust seals, 2) a wizard with logical guidance, 3) an online persona named Rosa, 4) Rosa with a voice. Over this sequence of experiments, the proportion of customers who were successful in downloading software for their digital cameras increased from 63 to 85 percent. Intel calculated that for every 5 percentage points gained in this area it would save $10 million a year by reducing telephone support calls and mailing costs.

Tool #4–Develop a virtual trusted advisor

Internet technology now makes it feasible for you to integrate a virtual customer advisor into your Web site. There are several ways you can provide this advisor with intelligence, but the key is that the advisor needs to be able to pick up on clues the customer provides and then generate good recommendations from those clues. The simplest approaches are:

Attribute elimination: where the customer selects the required product feature and the virtual advisor then identifies that meet those specifications.

Product comparisons: where the virtual advisor prepares side-by-side comparison tables that highlight the technical specifications of each product selected.

Since some customers just want the facts of they can make a decision while others want to take things slower, many companies have found it makes sense to offer three different virtual advisors on their Web sites:

A needs analyzer for first-time buyers.(Attribute eliminator)

A comparator for experienced buyers.(Product comparisons)

A power user advisor for those who know what they want to buy.

Obviously, in building a virtual advisor your Web site must be easy to navigate, have a comfortable look-and-feel, and provide sound advice. Providing a persona is great for those who want personal advice. The key is to design an advisor your customers will relate to and come to trust. Your advisor will need to accurately reflect how customers think and incorporate similar thought patterns. This will take some experimentation and learning on your part to get right.

True customer advocacy requires that your virtual advisor also be able to recommend competing products if their needs are better met by those products. At the very least, your advisor needs to be able to make an open and honest competitive comparison. The consumer will require this information and will probably do this anyway, so by offering it on your Web site, you build the buyer’s trust. This can be further enhanced by embedding additional trust clues like videos of customers explaining their experiences on your Web site.

Tool #5–Listen in and learn actual customer needs

Once you have a virtual trusted advisor in place, you can learn a lot about unmet customer needs by monitoring the dialogue between your advisor and customers. For example, General Motors built three virtual advisors for the truck section of its Web site–a mechanic, a retired editor of Consumer Reports and a contractor. Customers can choose which of these advisors they want to interact with.

In August 2001, GM noted consumers were often asking for three truck combinations that were not currently being offered:

A small truck that could tow boats.

A large truck that maneuvered like a small truck–that was possible with four wheel steering.

A large truck with high fuel economy.

As a result, in 2005 GM introduced a mid-sized truck which could tow bigger loads, a full-sized pickup with four wheel steering and a hybrid full-sized pickup that would offer exceptional fuel economy

Listening in to the interaction between consumers and the virtual advisor can also be enhanced in several ways:

Many companies now develop new products in partnership with “lead users.” In this method, a new technology need is identified and some leading edge users are found. They then participate in a workshop to help design a product that that will perfect for their needs. 3M has found that using this collaborative approach to develop new products is eight times more productive than traditional alternatives.

Another approach is to offer a “design pallet” that lets customers mix and match the features they want. For a truck, for example, the customer can change the power, size and options. For each change, the truck’s cost and fuel consumption is recalculated and displayed. This can identify clusters of potential customers who are prepared to accept various trade-offs to get a truck configured just the way they want. These may represent the significant new product opportunities of the future.

Tool #6–Build a full virtual advocate

Providing a virtual advocate for your customers is the ultimate aim of all these tools. It is the very highest level of customer advocacy possible. Some examples are already starting to emerge. There are already three simple advisors available to help consumers make wireless choices (WirelessAdvisor.com, Letstalk.com and Inphonic.com)

These sites all offer a choice of advisors so consumers can find someone they relate to. Typically, these online advocates:

Have an accurate database with up-to-the-minute information about what plans various companies are offering in your area.

Allow you to find the best plan that suits your needs.

Describe how you can save money.

Allow you to design your own plan and put your plan out for bid to the various companies operating in your area.

Provide information about the guarantees offered by each company.

Allow you to switch plans seamlessly without needing to contact your current supplier.

Send you notices whenever a new company enters your market and starts offering a plan that will meet your needs.

Goes back after three months and checks that the plan you’re on has actually saved you money. If it decides that some other plan choice would have been better for you, you are retroactively enrolled in the better plan and the savings are rebated to you.

Clearly, virtual advocates of this nature are a powerful tool for firms that want to enter new markets or increase their market share. Any firms that are not trust-based will quickly learn that the customer is the boss and that they are prepared to switch to whichever firm partners with them and fights for their interests.

Tool #7–Move your firm towards advocacy gradually

When a firm has many years of experience in push marketing, moving to a customer advocacy strategy will be very difficult. It will require vision, courage and passion. There are several things you can do to ease this transition:

Empathize with your customers–learn how they think, what they experience and what are the flow-on consequences of the decisions they make. All of this information will help you become a better advocate for their interests.

Change the mental model embedded within your corporate culture away from confrontational push marketing and towards customer advocacy. Talk about the benefits. Make sure your CEO is out front and leading the change. Provide change agents at all levels with the tools they’ll need. Meet regularly to discuss how your corporate beliefs are changing and evolving and plan out new initiatives. Keep at it until a new set of values get integrated into your corporate culture.

Hire new people who have high empathy with customers.

Develop short-term measures that look at the amount of trust generated rather than just sales and profits.

Create new incentives that will reward people when they build long-term trust relationships with customers. Tie all bonuses to relationship measures.

Establish a new management team position–Vice President of Customer Advocacy or Chief Advocacy Officer.

Enhance your cross-functional consistency–make sure all your customer-facing functions are on the same page and have access to the same information.

Build trust with all your stakeholders and actively advocate for their interests. Make transparency and openness the way you act with everyone. Work together with your partners to find new ideas that will benefit everyone.

Have a vision for your long-range success that everyone in the organization buys into. Then have the organizational courage to take risks to actually deliver that vision. The management team will need courage to take whatever steps are required to change the status quo and move the organization in the right direction. Mix in the passion that will also be required for sustained effort.

Don’t make advocacy a fad. Strengthen your TQM, customer satisfaction programs and your CRM initiatives. Advocacy is built on the foundation provided by these three elements. Be certain you have the best quality before you think about advocacy. You can’t be an advocate until you have satisfied customers.