Posts Tagged ‘Word of mouth’

Making Social Media Easier

by on Monday, January 23rd, 2012

When we talk with local businesses about Social Media, the most frequent objection to becoming more socially engaged is time. Many local merchants believe that the time required to attend to Facebook and Twitter is better used for tasks more directly related to running the business. Rather than argue the importance of Social Media, we’d like to pass along a post on Mashable that introduces some tools that make it easier than ever for a small business to manage its Social Media presence and derive maximum value from this powerful marketing medium.

via Kevin Moore (Creative Commons)

Some of these tools are geared toward agencies or at least larger companies, but there are two that we have used successfully at Zavee: HootSuite and TweetDeck. Both applications live on the desktop although both have mobile versions. TweetDeck is free and HootSuite has a free version that should be fine for most businesses. Both apps let the user manage multiple streams (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) simultaneously, including posting the same content to several streams. Both apps make it easy to schedule posts, so an hour or two on the weekend can result in a week’s worth of posts.

It’s also easy to redirect content, so a link, image or other content that is found on Twitter can be shared out on Facebook (and vice versa). This can be especially valuable for Zavee merchants, because Zavee shoppers now can share merchant-related content on Social Media even more easily than before. So merchants that sees a good review or recommendation can increase its reach by putting that content in their own Social Media stream. Merchants also can push news announcements published on Zavee to their Facebook and Twitter streams. That gets their own content noticed by even more potential customers.

Social Media can’t be fully automated, any more than any other marketing tool. But these two apps (and others mentioned in the Mashable post) can make the time devoted to Social Media time well spent.

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Airlines and Loyalty … It’s Not Getting Better

by on Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

Bill Hanifin of Loyalty Truth recently posted about airlines and customer service, a post prompted by his trip around the world (Malaysia and back – that qualifies). My trips are rarely as exotic but I fly almost every week, primarily between Newark and either FLL or PBI, and primarily on Continental. Like Bill, I have a soft spot for airlines, having begun my career in aircraft finance. Again like Bill, I am amazed – and not in a good way – by the unforced errors airlines commit when it comes to customer service.

Bill writes that airlines should be using the wealth of data available to them to build in more flexibility in dealing with customers, some of whom may be very valuable to the airline. I agree, but I think that ignoring their own data is only half the problem. A lack of empowerment is the other. Associates can only be as flexible as the rules allow. And I have a hunch that consolidation has made carriers more rigid and reduced employees’ sense of ownership (anyone have similar – or different – experiences at newly-merged carriers?).

Bill isn’t a fan of unbundling, but my view is mixed. I think baggage fees are a slap in the face to passengers. Airlines ask us to cooperate in limiting what we carry aboard, then charge us for our cooperation. Nice. On the other hand, unbundling food is a win-win, because concourse food concessions are improving steadily at many airports just as on-board food is disappearing. Carrying on our own food is one of the few freedoms we have as passengers, and I wouldn’t want to turn back the clock.

via Flickr - where are the jonses

Maybe it’s because there aren’t any bosses or unions at 35,000 feet, or maybe it’s because the airlines know how to hire for the cabins, but most flight attendants do a great job despite more crowding and fewer amenities. One recent flight departed “on time” by pushing back before the aircraft was fully catered. Not surprisingly, grumbling ensued. Very surprisingly, the flight attendants up front decided to open bags of almonds left over from the inbound flight and serve them in wine glasses. It showed that the flight attendants cared and it put a smile on every face in first class. Airlines can’t teach that kind of resourcefulness, but I hope they reward it.

One of the biggest customer engagement problems the airlines face as they impose more rules, charges and limitations is that the customer-facing staff is constantly required to disappoint or frustrate the customer. The trick, whether in the cabin, at the gate or at the ticket counter is to avoid turning delivering bad news into delivering bad service. Being told your bag has to be gate-checked is bad news; being made to wait for it at baggage claim is bad service. Being handed your bag at the Jetway is a smart way to ease the sting.

Flexible rules, empowered associates and a premium on resourcefulness can do wonders for an airline’s word of mouth. At a time when consumers are increasingly willing and able to share their experiences effectively, bad service is just reckless. If I hated Continental – and I don’t – I’m sure I could find a different way to get to Florida every week. Travelers under fewer constraints can drive to a more distant airport or just drive to their destination. And many people would just as soon stay home. Customers like me who really have to fly can use social media to make sure that everyone in our social graph – including whoever runs social media at the airline – knows exactly how and what the airline is doing.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • Airlines need empowered, resourceful associates applying flexible, data-driven rules. The alternative is an ongoing low-intensity conflict with customers that the airlines can’t win.
  • Every customer has an alternative to a bad airline, even if it means staying home.
  • Social media levels the playing field for airline customers. They can sit us down, but they can’t shut us up.

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Employees: Your Brand Evangelists

by on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

One of the drivers of growth in the social shopping space is the recognition that personal recommendations are among the most trusted marketing communications. What many companies in the space, including Zavee, are trying to accomplish is to maximize the timeliness, reach and relevance of those recommendations. This need is most acute for smaller merchants, who don’t have the option of simply buying reach through conventional media.

Word of Mouth

Word of Mouth (via Mo - Creative Commons 2.0)

Smaller merchants do have one significant advantage over larger competitors: because they are close to their customers they should be better able to deliver the kind of customer experience that results in credible, actionable, recommendations. Because they know that word of mouth is so important, and because they are more likely to be competing on service than on price, smaller local merchants are uniquely positioned to provide the Wow! factor that launches word of mouth recommendations.

Smaller merchants also have a related advantage, one they should leverage more fully. Unlike much larger competitors, most small company employees are customer-facing at least part of the time. These employees should be hired, trained and required to promote significant, relevant brand equities at every customer interaction. They also should be encouraged (and empowered) to provide the same Wow! factor as the sales associate or the owner/manager herself.

But just as word of mouth is no longer restricted to face-to-face interactions, the role of employees in promoting the brand can also extend beyond individual encounters. In particular, merchants should require – or at least encourage – all employees to actively promote the company’s brand equities through social media.

As companies consider how to implement a social media program, the role of employees should be an integral element of the strategy rather than an afterthought. What role might employees play in a social media program? Here are some suggestions:

  • Create a group blog for employees. It’s easy to do, you can link from your web site and blog posts are indexed by search engines. Some content could be expressly about the company (e.g., as a workplace, if that is a key equity) but most of the content could be about what interests the bloggers. Here the message is more subtle but potentially very effective: You should shop here because this company hires people like us. Amazon now has numerous blogs with this subtext – even a car blog – something they may have learned from having acquired Zappos, which pioneered the concept.
  • Let your employees run your Facebook page. Facebook is now so flexible that a company’s fan page easily can accommodate both “official” content from the company and less structured content from employees. Employees can leverage their own social graph to expand the company’s reach. One objective should be to pierce the wall between the company and its customers. Here’s a simple example: instead of the company simply announcing its “Employee of the Month,” why not post nominations (perhaps including video clips of the employees in action) on Facebook and let the community vote?
  • Get your employees Tweeting. There are many ways in which employees can use Twitter to benefit their company. One is simply to tweet actively about topics that relate to the company’s business. This does not necessarily mean promoting specific products or deals, although (with disclosure) there is nothing wrong with that. But the employees of, say, a fashion boutique should be on Twitter constantly providing value-added content about fashion, art, music or anything else the clientele would find interesting (and bringing useful information back to the company). Employees also can be the “canary in the coal mine” for their company. By setting up keyword and hashtag searches on Twitter they can see and respond to mentions of the company, its products, suppliers, etc. and respond appropriately. The scope of this task will vary by company and it needs to be handled carefully, but any established company that isn’t using Twitter in this way simply has its hands over its ears.

One final note about empowering employees to use social media on behalf of the company. It’s in everyone’s interest to clearly specify what employees must, can and may not do. Transparency and disclosure are vital to every social media plan, and it’s important to have someone in charge of ensuring compliance. Mistakes are inevitable but they need to be addressed promptly, lest your lawyers come in and advise you to prohibit employees from using social media altogether (note: pdf download req’d).

The Zavee takeaway:

  • Your employees can help provide the kind of experience that produces word of mouth recommendations.
  • They also can help you increase the reach and impact of your word of mouth marketing if you integrate them into your social media strategy.
  • There are countless ways to leverage employee involvement in social media – be creative!

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The Positive Side of Negative Reviews

by on Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

Actor, author, shortstop or chef, no one likes a negative review. But when we were developing the Zavee business model we decided early on that we would have to include negative as well as positive reviews. The goal we set for ourselves was to create a framework for reviews that were accurate, timely and fair – and that meant including negative reviews.

Our commitment to getting reviews right stemmed from our insight that reviews were another form of Social Media and, as such, were going to be a vital component of the Zavee experience and value proposition. We also learned, based on research with merchants, that many business owners who expressed concern about potential harm from fraudulent, malicious or even accurate negative reviews also intuitively understood the benefit of hearing about issues directly from the customer affected.

As marketers are learning, people will say whatever they want to whomever they want, and merchants don’t have the power to control their customers’ conversations. They can, however, do two important things.

First, they can listen, learn and respond. Thanks to Social Media, including reviews, merchants can make necessary adjustments to their business almost in real time. This is something that every business should be doing, all the time, through every available channel. Twitter and Facebook are great listening posts, but reviews are a channel that exists solely to provide feedback about the customer experience.

Second, merchants can participate in the conversation. By actively engaging with their customers merchants can address problems quickly and publicly; they can provide perspective that helps customers evaluate reviews; and they can favorably shape perceptions about the business.

  • Responding quickly is important because unresolved issues tend to fester. Responding publicly is important because it gives the merchant the chance to address at one time a concern that may be shared by many customers.
  • Actively participating is the only sure way to get the merchant’s perspective into the conversation. Both the manner and the substance of the merchant’s response can help customers determine how much weight to give a negative review, while the absence of a response does nothing but add credence to the reviewer’s complaints. A measured, factual response may not erase the impact of a negative review, but at a minimum the merchant will have extended the relationship with the customer and demonstrated both interest and respect.
  • Simply committing the time and effort to engage customers in conversation sends a positive message to all customers and can go a long way toward shaping perceptions of the customer experience. This can reinforce the positive experiences of current customers and build loyalty, but it also can lead non-customers to have a favorable impression of what it would be like to be a customer. In other words, an impressive response to a negative review can actually bring in new business.
Creative Commons 2.0

Reviews (via fengergold)

In benchmarking Zavee against other sites that feature reviews we observed a wide disparity in the treatment of key issues. Some sites filter reviews while others list them all chronologically. At least one site that uses filtering algorithms has had to defend itself against allegations that it improperly manipulated the placement of reviews. We decided not to filter or change the placement of reviews, because we believed that the less we intervened in the substance of reviews, the more confidence shoppers would have in them and, ultimately, in the Zavee brand.

We also observed that some sites permitted reviews (both positive and negative) that described experiences that had occurred long before the review was written. We thought reviews that were dated were so likely to be inaccurate that it would be unfair to both merchants and shoppers to have them on our site. We also were concerned, as many merchants seemed to be, that on some review sites there there were insufficient safeguards against fake reviews or even fake merchants.

We addressed these problems by requiring that any shopper who wanted to review a merchant had to have made a purchase from that merchant within the previous 30 days and by permitting only one review per purchase. Zavee solicits a review after every transaction, and the shopper’s My Zavee page lists recent transactions and the time remaining to submit a review. Zavee automatically rejects reviews that do not meet these rules.

We also were concerned about reviews that, while perhaps not fraudulent, seemed hostile or malicious. We initially considered moderating reviews, the way we moderate comments on Zavee Thinking, but we decided not to. There is nothing wrong with having editorial standards for reviews – we are, after all, responsible for the content on our site – but we thought the better way to deal with potential problems was to let shoppers and merchants have their say but remove reviews that violated our Terms of Use.

Because we passionately believe that reviews should be a dialogue, we also made it easy for merchants to post responses to shopper reviews. Merchants are automatically notified whenever they are reviewed and have 7 days to post a response. Responses appear with the original reviews and always show up together in a search. Shoppers can respond the the merchant’s response, and the entire conversation is threaded so it can be seen by everyone who sees the original review.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • You can’t control what your customers say, but you can listen, learn and respond to concerns – almost in real time.
  • Use negative reviews as a conversation-starter, not a relationship-ender.
  • How you handle unfavorable reviews can shape perceptions about your business, for future as well as current customers. Treat reviews as an opportunity to be impressive – you may be surprised by the results.

Update (4/14/10): MediaPost’s Marketing Daily reports that S.C. Johnson has been receiving substantial negative feedback, including reviews, about a new pet care product – and tells Marketing Daily that it is bringing the feedback to its product development team for consideration.

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The Boutique Mentality

by on Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

They aren’t always quick to see it, but local merchants have some built-in advantages over national chains and big-box retailers. There’s no denying that local merchants find it hard to compete on price. But consumers don’t care only about price: they care about service, too, and that’s a real opportunity for local merchants.

A recent survey found that women increasingly are shopping for clothing online. How does that news help local merchants? A whopping 84 percent of those who reported taking their business away from bricks and mortar stores did so because of poor customer service. And customer service is where local merchants have an advantage over larger competitors. Owners and managers of local businesses usually are closer to the customer, and are often the first to hear about issues or concerns. They have the ability to react to customer needs and even break (or change) the rules if circumstance dictate.

Chanel Boutique on Wicklow Street (via chacrebleu)

One thing local merchants can do to exploit their natural advantages is to adopt a “boutique” mentality. One big difference between boutiques and other stores is their focus on providing a unique, personalized experience, not just selling a product. Customers often respond favorably to that experience, not just by paying extra for it once, but by becoming loyal customers and by sharing their experiences with their social circle. The combination of premium pricing, repeat business and word of mouth is exactly what local businesses want to achieve.
The boutique mentality isn’t limited to retail. There are boutique hotels, boutique wineries, even boutique auto mechanics – a really good one services my race car. Most boutiques are small, but they are defined by service, not size. A small retailer that doesn’t provide a unique experience to every customer isn’t a boutique; it’s just small.

Part of the boutique experience is the sense that the relationship with the customer doesn’t end with the sale. Whether it’s as simple as a follow-up phone call or as elaborate as a series of surprise gifts, boutiques understand that continuing to engage after the sale helps create customers who are not just loyal, but vocal.

The best boutiques thrive on data. Knowing and catering to customer preferences is the hallmark of the successful boutique, especially boutique hotels. But hotels aren’t the only boutiques that have access to data about their customers. With tools like Zavee, almost any business can learn who their best customers are, how much they spend and how frequently.

It may take some effort to fit the boutique mentality into a business that doesn’t already have it. It certainly takes commitment to make it work, because it requires a focus on the customer that isn’t second nature for every merchant. And it sometimes requires some investment, especially for businesses that are new to managing customer data. But it may be just what a merchant needs to compete in difficult times.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • A business that wants to charge more, generate repeat business and earn referrals from vocally loyal customers should think and act like a boutique.
  • Boutiques are customer-focused before, during and after the sale, and rely on data to understand customer preferences.
  • The boutique mentality can be applied to businesses in virtually every category; it just takes commitment and creativity.

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2010: The Year of Social Shopping

by on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

As we come to the end of a most unusual year I’d like to provide an update on Zavee’s progress, as well as offer some additional thoughts.

Our most important news is that Zavee is almost ready to go live. We are finalizing the launch release of our software and expect to begin processing transactions by mid-January. We began our merchant sales efforts in November and already have signed up scores of local businesses in our South Florida launch market. Our consumer acquisition program will begin in January and ramp up over the next several months.

Shopping with Friends

Shopping, Socially

One of the most gratifying – and, frankly, amazing – things about the process of creating Zavee is the extent to which people who know what they’re talking about are saying the same things we are about Zavee’s core concepts. In short, Zavee is in the right place at the right time.

When we describe Zavee as a “social shopping” platform we recognize that this is a new concept for most consumers and businesses. Social media marketers, however, say that social shopping is poised for growth:

“Social shopping is really still in its infancy,” said Andy Lloyd, CEO at Fluid, an e-commerce technology company. This means retailers and solution providers are still thinking about how people connect with other people around buying decisions in an online environment and how they can facilitate those gatherings. “The challenge is people don’t know what social shopping is or what it does,” Lloyd continued, which is why the adoption rate isn’t very high yet.

Search professionals have been quick to see the advantages of social shopping for merchants, including advantages we discuss with merchants constantly: the ability to connect with customers, enhance credibility and leverage word-of-mouth.

From a consumer perspective, social shopping taps into basic principles of human behavior. Marketers increasingly recognize the potential of social shopping and are aligned with Zavee’s perspective on integrating social networking functionality with search and review capabilities:

In social shopping, you see recommendations and reviews that your friends have shared. You see items that your friends have purchased or brands that your friends have shopped with. This matters a lot when you’re shopping for a digital camera and are stuck deciding between three different models. Of course, the last 10 years’ worth of people’s purchasing histories and written reviews on Amazon may help you narrow your choice – if you can filter out the noise. But those reviewers are entirely anonymous to you, even though they may use a real name and have a rating history with the site.

We believe that 2010 will be the year in which social shopping comes of age. This clearly is good news for Zavee. We believe that our social shopping platform, which also integrates a cash-back rewards program and a mechanism for raising funds for local civic and charitable organizations, offers a compelling value proposition for merchants, consumers and causes. We can’t wait to prove it.

From all of us @Zavee, a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year to all!

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A Few (More) Words About Word of Mouth

by on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

Recently on Zavee Thinking we posted about how word of mouth (WOM) is simultaneously very powerful yet very fragile. It’s powerful because there is no stronger influence on a purchase decision than the recommendation of a trusted, knowledgeable individual. It’s fragile because so much can intervene to prevent that recommendation from being made and acted on. This post is about how merchants can make WOM less fragile by increasing the chances that a recommendation from the right customer will reach the right shopper at the right time. (Apologies in advance for the length of the post – this is something we think about a lot.)

The obvious place to start is at the point of sale, where the merchant has the most direct ability to influence customer satisfaction. Here we are talking primarily about intensity and latency: how strongly an emotion is felt and how long the feeling lasts. One clear way to increase the intensity and latency of customer satisfaction is to provide an over-the-top, mind-blowing, truly unforgettable experience at the point of sale (can we call it an OTTMBTUE?). That will certainly keep things top of mind! Unfortunately, the OTTMBTUE has a few drawbacks. First, not all categories and not all interactions are equally suited to blowing the customer away. Second, the typical means of providing an OTTMBTUE involves some form of payment to the customer, such as an upgrade or a free item. While merchants often have to make such a payment to an unhappy customer to right a wrong, applying that strategy in the hope of making a happy customer ecstatic can get very expensive – especially when the customer determines that she should be treated that way at every visit.

On the other hand, it is possible for creative merchants to create extremely high levels of customer satisfaction without giving away too much margin. One of my favorite examples is Tesco, the UK grocery chain. Stuck between a premium chain and a discounter, Tesco repositioned itself as a service-oriented brand. From 1995-2004 the company produced a campaign starring Prunella Scales and Jane Horrocks that used the tagline “Every Little Helps” (we would say, “Every Little Bit Helps”) to demonstrate Tesco’s commitment to the customer. If you’ve never seen this spot you’re missing a treat.

Another way to increase the latency, and perhaps the intensity, of customer satisfaction is to communicate with the satisfied customer early and often. Car dealers and some hotels, among others, get this half right: they email surveys to customers almost immediately but rarely follow up. If a customer gets a phone call after submitting a survey, it is more likely that the customer had reported a good experience or a bad one? Of course it’s important that merchants address issues raised by customers – but surveys may not be the best way to keep a delighted customer both happy and talkative. If a merchant can identify a very satisfied customer at the point of sale, a phone call several days later – just to chat, not to sell – can reinforce the feeling of satisfaction that the customer took away from the store. (Having conversations on social media is also a good idea.) The customer feels special because in fact she is being treated special. The merchant can’t treat everyone this way, and it may require an investment to learn which customers should be treated this way, but reinforcing customer satisfaction can increase the length of time the positive emotions remain top of mind and may even add to them.

Latency and intensity are both about time: the longer the customer’s intention to recommend the merchant remains top of mind the greater the likelihood that the customer will encounter someone who will act on the recommendation. Another factor is confidence. In order to act on a recommendation, the potential customer must have confidence in the recommending customer both generally and within the specific domain. If a customer is not someone who inspires confidence generally there is not much the merchant can do about it, but the merchant should know better than to treat that customer as a source of potential WOM.

via iproclaim.com

via iproclaim.com

However, the merchant can help a customer become more knowledgeable about the merchant’s domain and thereby increase the likelihood that a customer’s recommendations will be taken seriously and acted upon. Domains where the inherent level of difficulty is high are natural categories for this, and, indeed, internet legend Gary Vaynerchuck (almost 850,000 followers on Twitter) got his viral start posting how-to videos about wine on YouTube. Imagine a customer who leaves Gary’s store not just having received solicitous attention and paid a fair price for good wine but who has received an education, too. That customer not only is more credible as a recommender in the wine domain but probably has wine (and Gary’s store) top of mind for a longer period of time than otherwise.

The final point at which WOM is fragile also involves time: the person who receives the recommendation must be at or near the point of intention if he is going to act on it. Even if everything else lines up – a delighted customer leaves the store and immediately meets a friend who trusts her judgment generally and her knowledge of the domain specifically – the recommendation will not be acted upon if the friend has no intention of making an imminent purchase in that domain. Is there anything the merchant can do in this situation? It depends. If the friend has no interest in the merchant’s domain there is really no point to the recommendation. If this is not the case, however, the merchant can try to capture the friend’s contact information and leverage the recommendation as a reason to communicate with the friend (if the friend opts in). If the friend is disposed to trust the customer’s recommendation the merchant may be able to convert the friend to a customer the next time the friend is near the point of intention based on the prior, unsuccessful recommendation. Finally, by continually communicating with the satisfied customer, and indeed by repeatedly providing a positive experience, the merchant increases the likelihood that the customer will again encounter the friend (or perhaps a different one) closer to the point of intention.

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A Few Words About Word of Mouth

by on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Since Zavee is a marketing platform for small and medium sized businesses, we think a lot about word of mouth (“WOM”) marketing. It’s a powerful and cost-effective tool, which makes it ideal for businesses that don’t have big marketing budgets. It’s also a natural fit for smaller businesses, whose owners inherently are closer to their customers than than in large enterprises. And with its focus on organically spreading a marketing message WOM encompasses (and perhaps even spawned) social media marketing – something else we think a lot about at Zavee. We aren’t the only ones thinking about WOM, of course. There is a WOM trade association, some major conferences, several blogs on the subject and more than a few books.

http://hearmehearmenot.wordpress.com/

http://hearmehearmenot.wordpress.com/

One of the things that caught our attention as we were developing Zavee was the inherent fragility of WOM, especially from the perspective of the smaller business. In our conversations with small business owners, we learned that they think of WOM as a cycle: a positive customer experience leads to a personal recommendation, which leads to a new customer, and so on. They aren’t quite as focused – yet – on influencer marketing, buzz marketing or other categories of WOM as larger companies might be. There’s no doubt, however, that personal recommendations are powerful drivers of new business. One global consumer study indicated that 90% of consumers trusted recommendations from people they knew. What makes WOM fragile, however, is how easily the connections that make up the WOM cycle can fail.


The very beginning of the cycle – the business providing the kind of experience that makes customers want to recommend it – gets a lot of attention, but in a way that’s the easy part. At least, it’s the part of the cycle over which the merchant has the most control.

The next step is much more problematic. The customer leaves with every intention of recommending the merchant. But like most emotional drives, it will remain top of mind for only so long. At some point the intention to recommend the business will dissipate, or be crowded out by other things, so it’s vital that the customer encounter a potential recipient of the recommendation before this point is reached. Some customers will reach out to specific acquaintances to make a recommendation while others will wait until they encounter an acquaintance serendipitiously or are solicited for a recommendation.

Then there is the issue of the person who receives the recommendation. Obviously, it must be someone with whom the customer is acquainted. But personal acquaintance isn’t enough. For the recommendation to have the desired impact the recipient of the recommendation must:

  • Have confidence in the customer generally as someone whose recommendations would be reliable – no one would act on the recommendations of someone they think is a flake
  • Have confidence in the customer specifically as someone who is knowledgeable and experienced in the relevant domain – if the customer knows about wine but not shoes her recommendation of a wine shop will be more powerful than her recommendation of a shoe store
  • Be able to understand the reason for the recommendation – this isn’t always an issue, and the intensity of the recommendation can count for a lot, but it certainly helps if the customer can effectively convey the merchant’s selling proposition
  • Be at the point of intention – the recommendation will be more powerful if the recipient of the recommendation is ready, willing and able to buy than if she has to remember the recommendation later on, when the emotional drive that she has “borrowed” from the customer has dissipated or been crowded out

As much as anything else, it’s timing that makes WOM fragile. If our hypothetical customer is solicited for a recommendation within the scope of her expertise by an acquaintance who is at the point of intention, the recommendation should be very powerful – unless the customer no longer remembers her experience so intensely or so favorably. If she reaches out to an acquaintance to recommend a merchant while her experience is still top of mind, that recommendation should be powerful, too – unless the acquaintance has just made a purchase from a different merchant or otherwise is not at the point of intention.

In a future post, we’ll discuss some things that merchants can do to make the WOM cycle stronger, and we’ll also describe how Zavee can help. In the meantime, let us know what you do to make WOM work for you.

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