The Hindu Business Line : Pushing and pulling won't work

Provide your customers with `open, honest, and complete information,' and then `find the best products for them, even if those offerings are from competitors.' Audacious, it may sound, but this is Glen Urban's advice in `Don't Just Relate - Advocate' from Pearson (http://www.pearson-books.com">www.pearson-books.com) .

His logic is simple: If you advocate for your customers, they will "reciprocate with trust, loyalty, and purchases." Plus, "they will advocate for you now and in the future," by telling others, so that you spend less on acquiring new customers.

Were you to persist with `why,' Urban would hit back with `five proven sources of increased customer power' that you can't ignore. These are: increasing access to information, access to more alternatives, more simplified direct transactions, communication between customers and control over contacts.

To survive, you have only three options now, says the author. One, `push/ pull harder,' using advertising and price promotions; only, you'd find customers to be `wise and more elusive,' because in today's world, they will find out the facts. The second option is to strengthen relationships, using CRM; but 55 per cent of CRMs haven't succeeded, notes the book, citing John Freeland. "Impertinence and aggressive cross-selling can make your customers treat your company as if it were a cheeky acquaintance - making the customers cross the street to avoid contact with you."

Option three is customer advocacy, where you become "a faithful representative of your customers' interests." In this, `the new paradigm' is theory A, where A is for advocacy. Its seven rules are: advocate for your customers by being transparent and genuine; invest heavily in product superiority rather than in ads; create value instead of lowering price because "customers want the most benefits per dollar and not necessarily just the lowest price;" work together to design products so that you understand customers' needs and decision processes; make fulfilment flawless since `trust is hard to earn;' be loyal to build `a positive long-term relationship;' and measure the strength of such a relationship by monitoring repeat purchases and share of wallet.

To help you do a bit of navel-gazing, Urban offers questions to find where you are positioned on the trust dimensions. But check if advocacy is for you, because `advocacy is not for everyone.' For instance, commodity industries may not benefit from a trust-based strategy, concedes the author. "Uni-dimensional price-based competition favours the most efficient producer rather than the most trustworthy one."

Urban exhorts senior management to examine if advocacy is right for them though market conditions may seem to make the idea inappropriate. "In most cases innovative managers will see that responding to the rise of customer power with advocacy-based strategies is the way to maximise long-run profits," hopes the author.

Okay, is anybody following advocacy? Yes! AOL has a Chief Trust Officer, Siemens has a Director of Customer Advocacy and Quality, Cisco has a Customer Advocacy Group, and AMD's Consumer Advocacy Initiative is about five years old.

For instance, http://newsroom.cisco.com informs that with customer advocacy, customers get more than networking technology; "they get an unparalleled breadth and depth of support, and they get the people, processes, tools, and partners they need to help ensure their success with Cisco technology."

Worth trying out.

BookMark@TheHindu.co.in