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Book Review: Zombie Loyalists by Peter Shankman

Zombies1
Companies often churn through customers. Terrible and scary, but true.

Through bad customer service (along with lousy product, weak branding, and a host of other challenges), the good customers leave, and new ones have to be harvested. In fact, one of the most important metrics you’ll often hear a publicly traded company cite is their customer acquisition rate, and I suppose that’s because customer acquisition equals growth. However, where’s the “Customers hightailing it out of there” metric? Shouldn’t we pay some attention to that?

Upon reading Peter Shankman‘s latest book, “Zombie Loyalists,” I came to the following forehead-smacking, “DUHHH!” conclusion: Why not just hold on to your good customers, and turn them into your unholy marketing army of the night?

OK, that last part was all Peter. Truthfully, I don’t like zombies movies at all, nor the idea of zombies. But they are a fitting allegory of what Peter would like to see companies embrace: their best customers!

Peter introduces two stats that lay it out perfectly: 80% of companies think they provide superior customer service, and 8% of customers agree. WHAAAAAAA? That is abjectly horrible. To cop some corporate jargon, we’re nowhere close to being in “alignment” here! (note: if you’re reading his book and saying to yourself, “This is just common sense; Peter is telling me nothing new, so it’s 1-star review time …” I say bollocks. Look at the above stat. Even if you think you know this stuff, you’re not doing it. So you need to hear it again.)

Why have we forgotten that positive word of mouth rules? Over the past 5-7 years, the gullible have been swayed by the supposedly unlimited power of social media, as if those who wield it are sorcerers. Meanwhile, real human workers are treating real human customers like crap. Peter introduces many examples of this, which helps the message steep a bit for the reader.

Peter correctly points out that most customer service sucks, which means you don’t even have to try that hard to provide some simple delight to your fans. It’s a sad state of affairs when we say, “This works so great because of how bad things have gotten.” Not a knock on Peter, at all. It’s a knock on the current state of human customer service, most of which really does suck. To wit, have a heartbeat and a smile and you’re like in the top 10 percentile of customer service. You can lament this, or just take advantage of it.

Peter’s idea is to “infect” your customers by “biting” them with great customer service, which includes taking great care of them and providing them with unexpected delight. Peter again provides wonderful real-world examples, and implores the reader to work hard at this. The goal is to empower those zombies so that they can infect others.

A quick aside: No, these methods don’t always work. You’ll work hard to delight customers, and some will still write nasty things about you online, or worse, never patronize your business again. Look, if you have a decision maker citing this fact as the reason for not conducting your affairs in this way, that person is a shortsighted moron. I have noticed the art of unfair arguing usually involves lobbing such worthless invective – pointing out the examples where it didn’t work. Like, after a terrible school shooting, they’ll poll the community while emotions are running high, and 7% of people will still want free guns handed out with drivers licenses. Or those old toothpaste ads – 4 out of 5 dentists prefer Crest – who was that silly 5th dentist!? You get the idea. You can’t please everyone! But, if you can create an army of rabid fans, you’re going to be pleasing a whole bunch of people! That’s what you want to make happen.

Peter did it to me. He infected me. He was the first – THE FIRST – person to endorse my book, and he did so enthusiastically. I was so excited! Now, I don’t care if the Dalai Lama endorses my book – Peter’s name is not coming off the top of my book. Oh, what was that Peter? You want me to run through a brick wall for you? No problem. ON IT!

GREATEST TAKEAWAY – most customer service is bad. Your threshold for success isn’t that high! Try! (and I will tack on the fact that these are human beings we’re dealing with here. Reason enough to try! Please!)

In my opinion, Zombie Loyalists is better than Nice Companies Finish First (which happened to be an inspiration to me as I was writing my own book). With Zombie Loyalists, Peter does two things well: 1. He gets you in the right mindset to start building your loyal zombie army of followers (mindset is so critical, and too often overlooked), and 2. He give you many examples of how to do it. So the book is both inspirational and tactical. And Peter’s personality comes through, which keeps it very readable.

Thank you, Peter, for writing this. Two undead thumbs up!

Order Zombie Loyalists here! (not an affiliate link. Just order the book ’cause it’s awesome)

Did Miracle Whip Respond Appropriately?

Miracle Whip tweet

For a brand like Miracle Whip, and a company like Kraft Foods, just what IS the proper response to such foul, hateful tweets?

A.) Say nothing at all. This seems to be the choice most corporations would make in this case. Very few people saw the guy’s tweet. There is no point in responding.
B.) Invite the hater to contact a toll-free number to resolve the problem. Funny, I see companies doing that too, and in this case that would be a completely wasted, out-of-touch tweet. This tweeter does not have a solvable problem with Miracle Whip or Kraft.
C.) Say something back that’s sort of snarky, which in this case is what Miracle Whip or the agency tweeting for them did.

I’m kind of liking “C” here. I have no problem with their response, and actually think it positively inures to their brand’s bottom line. What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments below.

Link to the original tweet here

Spreecast Provides Great Customer Service

Garyvee on Spreecast

Gary Vaynerchuk tweeted and Facebooked about his first live appearance on Spreecast, a social video platform similar to Ustream. He used to hold Ustream chats and was excited to reconnect with fans. During the live Spreecast, he said that he’s been advising the firm, and this became obvious as he struggled to get the service to work. Spreecast hustled.

When I first jumped on, I couldn’t log in, couldn’t hear Gary, and couldn’t type anything in the chat window. Apparently no one had sound. At 7pm EST, Spreecast called Gary’s mobile to help him work out the problem. With their help, he got it working and almost 200 people joined the get-together.

Gary then brought me on to chat, and we were experiencing echoes. We weren’t sure how to fix it, and Spreecast again called (pic below). After they told him that I needed headphones to make the audio work, he gave me the royal boot. I made a sad face.

Gary Vaynerchuk on Spreecast

Once the technology was worked out, it was a pretty cool platform. It is possible that they would not (be able to) provide the same personal customer service to lesser-known users, but I was nonetheless impressed. Not long after the Spreecast ended, I received an email that said “This Spreecast has been archived and is ready for viewing.” I was then able to not only embed it below, but grab the screenshots you see above (I wasn’t fast enough when we were on live.)

I look forward to holding my own Spreecast sometime soon.

 

Never Treat Your Customers Like This

Some people never cease to amaze.

Just read:

http://penny-arcade.com/2011/12/26/just-wow1

and http://www.geekosystem.com/avenger-controller-pr-berates-penny-arcade/

I learned of this situation via @reverendfitty and this tweet.

Takeaways:

1. I think there is a misperception amongst some people (knuckleheads, we’ll call them) that any publicity is good publicity. No, bad PR is bad. A local restaurant made similar mistakes, saying whatever they wanted and then thinking that deleting the offending comments made it all better (that restaurant is now closed). Yes, you can say whatever you want anytime you want; it’s a free country. However, know that you’re going to get some blowback shrapnel coming your way. If receiving such negative publicity is part of your business plan, then have at it. Otherwise, you’re probably sullying your brand.

2. Also, I don’t think these same knuckleheads understand the multiplicative power of social media. You simply cannot treat people like crap, because it’s so damned easy to out such behavior. Why would you ever say things like this to people, either online or off? Slightly offtopic: I’ve always wondered about the legality of posting such emails. Do you need permission? And does that depend on what state you’re in? I’ll have to ask my friends @CraigGMoore and @JeffSchultzEsq about this.

3. Finally, this is not a social media problem. This is just a human relations problem. This is one person or set of people treating another human being like shit. Social media takes the shitty treatment and airs it out for all to see. I’d like to think we’d see less (or none) of this as time goes by and more such examples are made public. But we should be clear that this is not a social media issue. It’s just a company treating its customers poorly.

REALLY AWESOME POSTSCRIPT: Out of business?

REALLY AWESOME POSTSCRIPT 2 – Here’s a 2012 business goal for you: make sure people DON’T make movies like this about your business! (WARNING: this video is rated R – it contains foul language. Do not watch it if you don’t want to hear such words)

Business Tip – Get People To Write Stuff Like This About You

My number 1 business tip to aspiring entrepreneurs: get people to say things like this about you.

“I really think Rizzo Tees is an example of a company who has it right – leverage social media, provide a simple online storefront with great products, and provide stellar customer service. When you combine those three things, you truly have something special.”

This means:

1. Be nice. Nice to everyone! Be nice to your customers. Be nice to your service providers. Be nice to the IRS when they audit you. Be nice!

2. Ship your product as fast as you’d like to receive something as a buyer.

3. Be hyper-attentive to mistakes you’ve made. Don’t be all paranoid. If a customer says “I never received my product,” don’t say to yourself “Man, I really think they received the product I shipped them. I have a delivery confirmation. I think they’re just trying to get another one for free.” No they’re not. And if they are, that’s no more than 1% of your customers. If your glass is half empty, go back to being an employee somewhere – just quit business altogether!

4. Finally, when someone does praise you like this, freak out a little bit! It’s extremely exciting when someone takes time out of their day to write a blog post about you. Praise them back, comment on their blog, and appear to be as thankful as you probably are. If you’re not touched by such positive comments, you may not have what it takes to conduct business in this new socially connected economy.

If my blog had been up and running in October 2009, I would have written this post back then! Thanks you Trey Connell for your continuing support of Rizzo Tees.

New Post On Scorch Agency Blog – Twitter And Customer Service

Over on Scorch Agency’s blog, I wrote about the high level of customer service that many companies are providing using Twitter.  The real question is… why can’t companies provide this level of customer service across all platforms? Why are the people on the phones not taking care of problems in the same manner?  Read the post and you’ll see what I mean – after contacting Adobe via Twitter, they fixed the problem in two hours.  I wish our three previous phone calls would have done the trick.  Nevertheless, kudos to Adobe for helping us out.