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Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force
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Sales rank 775,587
Customers rating (based on 40 reviews)
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Harness the power of customer evangelism to increase loyalty, sales, and profitability of your organization. When customers are thrilled about their experience with your product or service, they can become outspoken "evangelists" for your company. Savvy business professionals are discovering that this group of satisfied believers can be leveraged as a potent marketing tool to increase their customer universe. Authors Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba know how to take a company’s best customers and turn them into influential, loyal, and enthusiastic evangelists. Creating Customer Evangelists explains the six tenets of customer evangelism, why they work and how readers can use them in their own marketing efforts. Through in-depth research and interviews, authors Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba document the inspirational stories behind large and small companies that have produced legions of unofficial salespeople and a cost-effective and powerful marketing force: · Krispy Kreme · Southwest Airlines · Dallas Mavericks · Build-A-Bear Workshop · IBM · O’Reilly & Associates · SolutionPeople Written for marketers, entrepreneurs, and leaders who know that solid customer relationships build and sustain companies through good and rocky times, Creating Customer Evangelists is a must-read guide to building an influential, loyal, and enthusiastic volunteer sales force.
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| Publisher | Kaplan Business | | Release date | 11/2002 | | Availability | Usually ships in 24 hours | | Edition | Hardcover |
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 Poorly written, atrocious organization, trite information
This book was not very useful if you want to create customers who recommend your business. There is a fair amount of soft proof that "evangelists" are valuable, a lot of vague examples cited, but almost no actionable ideas. Overall, I was pretty annoyed with this book, and off the top of my head, here is a list of the the things that annoyed me the most:
1. Not relevant to small companies. I am not sure how much can be learned from Southwest Airlines, Apple Computers, Harley Davidson. Some small companies were included, but the examples cited were mainly from major corporations.
2. Poorly organized. The chapter titles are not descriptive. The chapters themselves tend to ramble, and there are no sub-chapters. I ended up rewriting the table of contents myself, so I would better understand what I am reading. Here is what the TOC should have been:
PART I: INTRODUCTION
Ch. 1 - Introduction, Overview of the book
Ch. 2 - Value of Customer Evangelists
PART II: 6 STEPS TO CREATING C.E.
Ch. 3 - Customer Feedback
Ch. 4 - Provide Value Added Information
Ch. 5 - Promote Word of Mouth
Ch. 6 - Create Community (this is actually the title of this chapter)
Ch. 7 - Provide Low Risk Entry
Ch. 8 - Create a Cause (this is actually the title of this chapter)
PART III: CASE STUDIES
Ch. 9 - Creative Consultants
Ch. 10 - Book Publisher
etc. etc.
3. Almost no guidance on implementation. Like so many books written by consultants and marketers, this is a book of "big ideas", not about how to actually do anything. To give just one example, the chapter on customer feedback (title: "Customer Delta-Plus") goes on and on about the importance of getting feedback. Not one word on how to record this feedback in a database, how to analyze the data collected, or how to integrate this data into operations.
4. The case studies were worthless, and they are half the book. The writing is so convoluted, I could not figure out what they were trying to get at. In the first one ("Solution People"), I still don't even know what the business was (what the heck is "Creativity Consulting"?). These chapters would have received a failing grade in any decent high school composition class. The editors at Kaplan Publishers should be ashamed of themselves.
You get the idea. I did come away from this book with a few good ideas, but it was work to get through all the fluff.
 No money? You can still create loyal customers!
Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba coin the term "customer evangelism" as they combine to create a manifesto about how to gain an enthusiastic following for your company. This is a great quick read that I would highly recommend to anyone trying to gain insight into your customers and how to make loyal advocates to your business.
Why not let your customer do the work by spreading your company for free? They are after all some of the most influential people to your business and this book teaches you this and give you the tools to harness the power of word of mouth, build loyalty, and you will grow. Converting good customers into exceptional ones who will spread the word of your company is what you want?
McConnell and Huba try to cram consumer evangelists into 6 principle components.
1. Customer Plus Delta: (understanding what your customers love, want, and hate through direct feedback and interaction)
2. Napsterize Your Knowledge: ( make intellectual property available to customers and transmittable)
3. Build the Buzz: (use networks to get people talking)
4. Create Community: (create a way for a sense of belonging for you customers)
5. Bite-Size-Chunks: (offer small pieces for consumers to try before they buy)
6. Create a Cause: (rally customers around something bigger than you)
You can create evangelists for little cost, you need to listen to your customers and learn about what they love, hate, and want improved. This book teaches you how to do this and even provides in-depth examples with companies such as Southwest airlines, The Dallas Mavericks, IBM, and more. The internet has shaped consumers to easily badmouth companies so it is important to understand how to address these problems in a proactive manner and improve your business before it fails.
Although the book is good at effectively targeting ways to involve customers and to get them to evangelize your products it does lack some uses of technology. I think this is partially due to the books being out of date as it was initially published in 2003. The book fails, by not address the blogging world very much. There are some mentions such as [...] but it doesn't hone the concept that everyone has control over a large say on the internet now. There is some insight into web lurkers. There is address to social media sites at all as a means to create evangelists, which I was surprising. I suppose some of the concepts could be transferred to social media programs but it is not explicitly highlighted in this book, you will have to go elsewhere.
The book clearly defines these 6 pillars with in depth case analysis of big companies such as Southwest, IBM, Build a Bear Workshop, and The Dallas Mavericks. Although there is strong evidence and support for clearly achieving evangelists it seems that it may not be easily applied to all businesses, especially smaller businesses.
I think this book is especially beneficial to those who are trying to accomplish a lot with little financial backing. Utilizing the 6 tenets as a framework to improve your business and helping to create the best experience for customers is the top priority and doesn't always revolve around money.
It is apparent that McConnell and Huba are well known and are the gurus of consumer evangelism. They bring valid points to the table and present it in a fun text which is a super fast read! I enjoyed this book and found that I can apply it to my band in many ways. I am applying some of these principles by trying to create great experience for fans, interacting and getting to know what products people want to see, honing a society of followers, and embracing them to improve our overall product.
There are list like approaches with statistics and examples to encourage you. It even offers an ending chapter on entitled the "custom evangelism workshop" which does an excellent job tying the entire book up and showing examples for you to apply what you learned.
Overall I would highly recommend this book if you are having a hard time retaining customers, want to become more motivated to listen to customers, or are just interested in consumer evangelism. This is great read and a great value!
 Has little to do with Creating Customer Evangelists
Creating Customer Evangelists has little about how to create Customer Evangelists. Lots of stories of lucky companies.
 Great Information on Customer Evangelism that is Ahead of It's Time
This book is incredibly insightful and clearly ahead of it's time at original publication. Jackie and Ben take you through, not only learning how customer evangelism works, but why it works, and what's coming across the frontier of getting your customers to basically do your marketing job for you. There are plenty of real-life examples and they cover the topic far beyond theory. Great, great stuff for all marketers looking to market in the Digital 2.0 age, especially those attempting social marketing (blogging, social media, etc).
Finally practical steps
I have found that most books about marketing are about someone's one success in the past and just discuss the barriers they had to break to make their winning strategy work...they tend to be egocentric. I have wanted a book that really lines out the steps to take to create people loyal to a brand. I am not looking for a magic step-by-step I know everything takes time, but this book is doing a great job explaining practical things to do to create a loyal following. I got turned on to this book by their blog which is amazing...check it out at http://www.churchofthecustomer.com/
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