From Word of Mouth to World of Mouth - Look Who's $talking!!
"Hey, guess what?" I said to my audience. "I had a great customer experience that led me to believe the most important thing you can buy when you buy your next cell phone is ... the insurance." I am a Verizon Wireless customer and over the past year I had one phone completely die while I was on the road. Verizon was able to have a phone shipped overnight (WITH early morning delivery) to my hotel! That's service! And the people on the phone were NICE ... really nice. They were nice enough for me to ask, "Are you always this nice?" A few months later I managed to lose the phone altogether. Again the phone was replaced within 24 hours via the web; all it took was paying a small penalty. So, who cares? What's the point? For the purposes of this Rant, the point I must make is: This is not a paid endorsement ... I will enjoy no "material" gain from this random product endorsement ... the endorsement comes only from my enthusiasm for the product and the experience.
Yeah, so? The fact is that business has become such a slave to the power of WORD OF MOUTH (WOM), that it has been elevated to an entire marketing program! Once upon a quaint time when a friend, colleague, relative, co-worker, or even a stranger endorsed or recommended a product, service, vacation destination, movie, etc., we were able to accept or reject their input based on what we thought of that person. Well ... a couple of things have changed that ought to make us look a little deeper at these endorsements - some of these folks making the recommendations are being paid! Even though you are legally bound to disclose that you are being paid to say nice things about a company, the fact is that this remains a murky area in the quest for WOM.
Since the arrival of programs like tracking your Net Promoter score, generating "buzz," or "going viral," business's need for generating WOM "buzz" at the person-to-person level appears to be on the rise. There is now an actual association called WOMMA - the Word of Mouth Marketing Association - founded in 2005 with roughly 400 members. I don't know about you, but this surprised me! According to http://womma.org/join/, "WOMMA is the premiere non-profit organization that advances the discipline of credible word of mouth marketing both offline and online."
Color me stupid! Advancing the discipline of credible word of mouth ... Geesh! WOMMA has a prestigious list of members on its website - with brands about which we may think, "Hey, what do they need this kind of thing for?" Then the light goes off! Maybe the brands are so well known because of their constant attention to generating WOM. I start to feel duped ... then I think, "What's the difference?" Advertising is advertising, is advertising, and WOM is among the most effective mechanisms. Today's WOM mechanics focuses on generating an emotional story. The consumer attaches to the brand and repeats the story to amuse, entertain, and (by default) endorse. Here's an example of Ben & Jerry's giving away ice cream. This April 2010 press release was issued by Ben & Jerry's regarding the release of its new flavor, Boston Cream Pie: "To mark its arrival, Ben & Jerry's will be offering free scoops of the new Boston Cream Pie flavor at its Boston Scoop Shop locations on Patriots' Day, April 19th to celebrate the iconic Massachusetts state holiday."
When WOM is not so great is when the stories being told are about "unplanned" events ... recalls, cover-ups, ethical violations, and the day-to-day poor customer service experience stories. There is a much bantered about statistic that unhappy consumers will tell more people about their experience than happy ones. It would follow then that perhaps an investment in the elimination or significant minimization of factors contributing to these kinds of stories ought to merit some attention at the management and executive level.
Remember when Vincent Ferrari made it onto the Today show with the recording of his effort to cancel his AOL account? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmpDSBAh6RY) AOL had lots of WOM with that event, none of which made the company particularly happy! Toyota's brand crisis or the BP oil spill ... these events generate much more than WOM. In my opinion, WORD OF MOUTH often morphs to WORLD OF MOUTH. The internet, global news organizations, and investigative journalism (60 Minutes' recent whistle blower story on the oil spill comes to mind) all contribute to bad news moving quickly ... more quickly than can be controlled and likely more quickly than deliberate WOM campaigns developed in the behavioral lab that predict every move a consumer will make when offered various stimuli.
When it comes to customers, to WOW is to WIN. So take the time to discover what the WOW factor is that is able to drive the WOM activities. This can be as mundane an investment as the consistent and up-to-date delivery of ongoing training via interesting and effective methods. This can also be systems that are properly designed and configured to support the staff supporting the customer. How about hiring the right people, promoting on merit, setting high expectations of people, providing opportunities for growth and development, management developing a commitment to the meaningful use of statistics, or data mining for valuable information about the experience of customers and employees? Have you considered WOM within your organization? Talent is retained when respect and mutual gain are enjoyed. When turnover is high - at any level - it is often the very best talent opting out, not for more money but for pure human enrichment. Companies like Zappos pride themselves on their culture ... a culture of kindness. They generate "buzz" around products and services and around their approach to job enrichment and professional development. And Zappos' story has gone global - WORLD of MOUTH.
There is another distinction worthy of note. Business-to-consumer companies use WOM dynamics much differently than business-to-business companies. I never met a purchasing department that got too excited about a prospective vendor making an ass of themselves or "going viral" on YouTube. In contrast, certain consumer products (e.g., video games, entertainers, digital devices) thrive on such events. This is not a one size fits all ap. But it seems to me that whatever type of marketing is the focus of your company's efforts, it must include an assessment of your internal ability to deliver.
There is a certain "buzz" about brand promises not being met. If your marketing promises a fun filled, joyous, crazy moment via a paid for blog or clever youtube.com video placement AND the claims prove false, WOM picks that up too. So the internal workings, the employee experience, the tools, the organizational model, and the "rules" must yield a workforce in sync with the promotion. Otherwise, you become just another disingenuous player ... and that becomes the story.
If marketing people are constantly thinking about what they can do to get attention, what is the next most outrageous thing we can do? What is the limit? As a baby boomer what will make me speak on behalf of a product or service varies significantly from that of my son in his late twenties. My concern is ... what is trustworthy? Do I now have to ask people recommending products, services, etc., if they are in fact being paid to do so? I'm not so sure I'll ever get to that. But I would like to know that as much effort is going into the back end of the experience as the front end. The back end is where the real WOM occurs - both good and bad!
My Best,
Kathleen
PowerHouse Consulting
360 Route 101, Suite 6
Bedford, NH 03110
www.powerhouse1.com
1-800-449-9904
(#38, From Word of Mouth to World of Mouth - Look Who's $talking!!, June 2010)