customer advocacy
Customer Advocacy
Monday, February 11th, 2008I recently read an interesting report by Forrester in their “Customer Experience Index” series. It was all about the insurance carriers and what their customers think of them. They recommended that insurance carriers should appoint an executive who is dedicated to improve the customers’ experience but what really caught my eye was the endnote that talked about customer advocacy.
Forrester argued that it is not customer satisfaction but customer advocacy that encourages a customer to do more business with a company. They define customer advocacy as doing what is best for the customer even if it is not what’s best for the company’s bottom line. They describe four components of customer advocacy, simplicity, benevolence, transparency and trustworthiness.
To be transparent and simple you need to have clear customer communications. How else can a customer know that you are trying to do what’s best for them?
