Turning Customer Engagement Into Action

Customers who advocate for your company are an invaluable asset.

"Each customer buys with one of two distinct personalities," says John Todor, managing partner of marketing consultancy The Whetstone Edge. "[One is] the indifferent personality, when the customer sees the purchase as a task, and shops to get the best tradeoff between price and convenience, and there is no emotional involvement or loyalty. The other is the engaged personality, which pursues the outcome of whatever you're selling because it is meaningful and valuable to them."

The advantage of engagement is the potential to turn customers' attention into advocacy. But it is a conversion that some companies struggle with because they cannot get themselves and their customers out of a transactional mind-set.

"We live in a stressful world with overwhelming choice, and that tends to create overload and confusion, and puts customers in a state where they just want to get [a purchase] over with. An emotional connection makes the customer open-minded."

That emotional connection—the value beyond just the cash-for-products exchange—is what creates an advocate. "Advocacy happens because your product is meaningful for [customers] to talk about and to recommend, beyond just getting a task done," Todor says. "And that requires a trusting relationship, focused on issues."

Advocacy also happens when companies create an opportunity for customers to do so.

Hewlett-Packard's Invent Center is one example of a program designed to build trust—and advocacy. The Invent Center showcases proposed solutions over a two- to three-day period, giving visiting customer executives a chance to see prototypes of custom solutions before committing to a contract. The high-touch, hands-on experience creates the kind of in-house influencer on the client side needed to move from proposal to purchase. "Customers have said at the end of the sessions that they don't feel they have been sold HP, but that they are sold on HP," says Paul Jeremaes, director of the Invent Center program in EMEA.

HP's style is very up close and personal. TiVo uses a broader approach by turning some of its most knowledgeable customers into trusted experts who assist the wider TiVo customer base. It's able to capitalize on the strong connection its customers make with the way the product changes the television experience. "We still have very much a word-of-mouth kind of product," says Jason Laneve, manager of customer service at TiVo, "but because more and more DVR products have come onto the market, we have to have evangelistic people who will help us sell over other DVRs."

The company visited independent online communities and blogs and then invited select TiVo enthusiasts to become support All-Stars on the TiVo corporate support site. Currently the All-Stars participate for a specified period of time; there's also a waiting list of fun and unique advocates to fill slots as they become available.

TiVo compensates the All-Stars with gifts, retaining their independence while providing valuable support and influence for new customers and TiVo prospects.

"This wasn't driven at an acquisition level, but an important byproduct was customer retention—now people can find answers before going back to a retailer to return things," Laneve says. "And we have customer-savvy people helping other customers—all for the love of the product."